Rise of the Guardians: Earthsong
by IAmRoxas
Summary: Pitch Black is at it again, this time with a dastardly plan to rob the world of its spring! Alongside a new ally, the Guardians begin to formulate a plan to once again fell this terrible foe; in this process, Jack learns more about his past and his role in the world, and discovers something he never thought possible...
1. Foreword

_**Author's Note:**_ This story has an associated playlist! Please check it out by searching "Earthsong" on Spotify, since I cannot post the direct link. If you have trouble finding it, please DM me!

As the full moon hung low in the sky, bathing the world in its soft white glow, the sleepy town of Burgess lay in the final thralls of a cold winter. The rooftops were still coated in a thin layer of frost, ice Crystal's sparkling like precious diamonds as the moonlight streamed over them. The trees stretched their naked branches toward the night sky, as if desperately trying to grasp the pale light of the stars to provide them sustenance. A cold wind blew through the empty roads, carrying with it a chill; it danced over frosty wooden fences, cars covered in a thin layer of snow, mute green grass that was crunchy with the lingering ice, before shooting into the nearby woods that was nothing more than a collection of dark, leafless pine stalks. It whirled through the snow banks, jumping like a winter white rabbit, and swirled snowflakes about; they were little fairies prancing in the night, their little laughter barely audible over the shrieking of the wind, before dropping down to join their brethren collected on the ground. The wind glided into a clearing, where a beautiful lake was frozen over, and its icy surface was a mirror to the black sky above. Joyous laughter suddenly split the air, and Jack Frost skated over the wind he had conjured, sliding over the crystalline surface of the lake before springing up and landing expertly in the bough of a sturdy tree. He tapped the bark with his staff, admiring the intricate pattern the ice crystals that formed against the dry brown exterior. As he chuckled to himself, stretching out to lounge in the bough with one leg swinging slowly in the chilly air, he tucked his arms behind his head and looked up at the full moon with a satisfied smile. The only sounds were the singing of crickets and the occasional rattling of branches as the breeze shook them.

Suddenly, there was another sound, too. Jack sat up with narrowed eyes as he strained his ears to distinguish the new noise from the usual melody of the forest, and he gasped quietly when he realized the errant noise was a melody in itself. _Someone is singing?_ Quiet as a mouse, he slipped off of the branch and drifted down into the snowy bank below, his footfalls silent as he walked across the pure white snow. The song grew louder as he followed the beautiful voice, and after an minute he could discern that it was a female. She was singing a song without words, her voice rising and falling in a clear melody. Jack had never heard it before, but it sounded eerily familiar to him. He could hear it clearly now, meaning the mystery woman was close, so he pressed himself against the back of a wide tree and carefully peered out into the night.

She looked like an angel descended from Heaven as she slowly walked across the snow, wearing a simple white dress with flowing fabric that fluttered behind her as the wind flowed through the sheer sheets. Blonde hair streamed behind her, glowing silver in the moonlight. Her skin was creamy white, but not ghostly like Jack's; it was warm, rosy, full of the breath of life. Jack had never seen such a divine creature in his long, long life, and as he exhaled in wonder his breath fogged up in the cold. Enraptured by the goddess, he crept as close as he dared, mere yards from her as he watched her with wide eyes. As she hummed, the sound drifted over the wind to him, and it was the purest music that had ever graced his ears. _Why would a beautiful girl like that come wandering through the woods by herself?_ Concerned for her safety, he debated calling out to her, until he noticed what was happening around her.

Where she walked, the snow melted, turning to crystal clear water before being absorbed by the lush green grass that sprang up under her bare feet. Jack could feel the temperature warming around him; he could actually _feel_ the water condensing on his skin. Suddenly, she whirled about, her dress flowing like water as she raised a hand in some kind of dance; Jack breathed in sharply as the tree he was clung to abruptly grew warm, and the bark grew darker as the thin layer of frost vanished. He glanced up, and on the naked branches little green shoots were beginning to sprout, the buds of new leaves rapidly forming in response to the woman's strange ritual. When he looked back down at the clearing, most of the snow was gone, replaced by a luscious carpet of green patterned with brilliantly colored wildflowers. Like a ghostly ballerina, she glided through the brown trees, bringing the spring wherever she moved. Jack leaned on his staff as he watched her, amazed. _Is she the one who brings the spring? Who_ _ **is**_ _she?_

"Wow…" he murmured aloud, so enthralled that he didn't even realize that he had spoken. It was then like a switch was flipped, snapping the girl out of her performance for the trees; she dropped down onto the flats of her feet, and Jack gulped as emerald green eyes flashed in the moonlight, glaring right where he was hiding. Her chest heaving and face flushed as he stared intently where he was standing half-masked by the tree and a scraggly bush, he prayed that she could not see him. A tense minute passed, with the girl just _staring,_ and Jack considered giving himself just to break that tension. However, before he could react, the girl whipped a hand to her mouth and a sharp whistle split the quiet night air. Jack covered his head, expected an attack, but instead there was a rush of winds and the flurry of feathers; when he lifted his head, the girl had vanished, leaving the lush forest scene behind. Jack walked out into the clearing, the grass that had just grown freezing beneath his feet, as he looked up at the night sky hoping to see a glimpse of the beautiful woman.

 _I wonder who she was…_


	2. Chapter 1: Pitch Black is Back!

Jamie squealed with delight as he threw open the front door to his home, taking the front steps two at a time before throwing himself into his front yard and rolling around happily in the soft green grass that had seemingly appeared overnight. Sophie came plunking down the steps, chanting "one, two, one, two" as she went, before jumping down onto the concrete and squealing with delight to run over and sprawl out beside her brother. Jamie laughed as he spit out a lock of her blonde hair that had somehow gotten into his mouth, then rolled onto his back to breath in the warm springtime air. Alongside the house, the flowers we shooting up, and would soon form colorful little buds. The trees alongside the street were beginning to form new leaves, too.

"It's _spring!_ " he cried, delighted, and his head suddenly snapped to the side as he heard an amused chuckle float down from the fence. He beamed widely when he saw who was sitting there; it was his best friend, Jack Frost, leaning against his staff as he sat on the wooden planks, one leg swinging lazily as he gave Jamie his signature lop-sided smile. "Hello, Jack!"

"Good morning, Jamie," the teenage winter spirit and newly-named Guardian smiled gently down at him. It was then that Jamie realized that, with the oncoming of spring, his wonderful friend would probably be leaving for the season. Suddenly despondent, he sat up and pouted down at his lap, prompting Jack to hop down from the fence wearing a concerned look. "Hey, what's that face for?" he grinned weakly and ruffled Jamie's hair affectionately, and even though he was sad at Jack likely departing, he could not help but smile slightly.

"I was just thinking about how you would be leaving," he answered as he looked up at him, and Jack frowned deeply and looked away awkwardly, swinging his wooden staff in his hands.

"Oh. Yeah. Gotta go spread joy to other kids in the world, ya know?" he smiled, but a hint of sadness still left a shadow on his boyish features. He then grinned widely and poked Jamie in the chest with the end of his staff, knocking him over into a fit of giggles. "But I'll be back soon! What's spring without a freak ice storm, yeah?" he joked. It was then that Sophie came tottering up to Jack, jumping up and trying to grab his magic staff, and the tall boy laughed in amusement as he held it out of her reach. "So, Jamie, why don't you get all your friends? You really didn't think I would take off without a farewell party, did you?" he winked. Jamie gasped happily, then jumped to his feet to scramble down the sidewalk, calling for his sister to follow as he raced down the neighborhood to gather his friends. Jack watched him with a smile, leaning on his staff as the little boy ran from house to house.

 _I guess this is_ _ **her**_ _doing,_ he thought as his wintry blue eyes swept over the neighborhood that was no cast in green. Just the night before, it had been Jack's domain, a winter wonderland where children built snowmen and snow angels, and had fervent snow ball fights. In all the many centuries he had been doing this, he had always thought that spring was a natural process, just a product of the Earth going about its business. It made sense now, though; he brought winter with him wherever he went, and so it stood to reason that there would be another side of the coin, a spirit of spring and flowers and warmth. _Why is it just now that I'm seeing her, though? Wouldn't she have introduced herself by now?_ He wondered. It was a puzzling situation, but unfortunately he had no solutions. He had seen the girl once in four hundred years; who was to say when he would see her again?

"Jack! Jack, let's _go!"_ Jamie demanded impatiently, and his friends chorused in agreement. Jack was abruptly ripped out of his thoughts, and soon forgot all about the beautiful girl as he dashed over to the little boys and girls, dancing on the wind as he raced them to the nearby park.

The children fell upon the various play sections of the park with glee, swinging from swings and sliding down slides with squeals of delight. Jack perched himself in the grass, cross-legged with his staff on his lap, watching them with a warm smile. It always did him good to see the kids happy, especially Jamie; the little boy was screaming with glee as Cupcake chased him across the playground in an intense game of tag. Abruptly, the chunky little girl shifted girls and charged him, startling him thoroughly. As he scrambled to his feet, sputtering for her to stop, she grinned cheekily at him before poking him in the cheat. Though it was an innocent gesture, the girl had almost superhuman strength, and the small touch knocked him flat on his back.

"You're it!" she cried, and with a booming laugh, she took off across the grass. Jack groaned as he sat up, rubbing his chest that was most surely bruised, while the children held their breath waiting for him to chase them. He pretended to be disinterested for a moment, rubbing the back of his neck, and then suddenly jumped to his feet and conjured a harsh wind to carry him across the park. They scattered like marbles, shrieking as the winter spirit chased them across the playground, riding across his magical windstorm. Jamie howled with laughter as he desperately tried to escape his friend, but in his effort he lost control of himself and went crashing through a tangle of bushes. Jack immediately abandoned the game and went running after him, shoving the leafy bushes aside to glance around wildly.

"Jamie?" he called, and he could hear his voice floating up from somewhere. He hopped over the bush to find that the area was wooded, and sloped downward at an appreciable angle. He followed the trail of broken branches and strewn leaves to find Jamie sprawled on his back at the base. "Jamie!" he cried as he slid down to him, afraid that he was hurt; thankfully, the little boy just giggled happily. Smiling softly, Jack reached down and poked him in the forehead. "You're it."

"Aw, nuts," he chuckled. Smirking, Jack grabbed him by his skinny arm and pulled him to his feet, and Jamie took a moment to shake the leaves and twigs from his hair and brush the dust from his clothes. Before the boy could take off, however, they both stiffened as a vile voice drifted out of the trees. Jack raised a finger to his lips, then crouched down and cautiously crept over the ground to peer through some bushes. Jamie crawled after him, his eyes wide as he peered through the gap in the bushes, and what they saw there sent shudders traveling up both their spines.

There, in a small clearing with a vicious scowl on his pasty white face, was none other than the Guardians arch enemy Pitch Black.

"Ugly, disgusting things," he snarled as he stamped a budding flower beneath his foot, grinding it mercilessly into dust. " _Spring._ I always hated it!" he roared as he whipped around, his black bleak fluttering like black bats as he glared around at the beautiful springtime assemblage. "With all its _warmth_ and _goodness_ and _light…_ It's _revolting,_ " he continued to mutter to himself in delirium. Frightened, Jamie pressed close to Jack, and to reassure him the young teenager wrapped an arm around him as if to shield him from the dark villain. Angered by his presence, Jack's fingers were curling around his staff, and his teeth were clenched together.

"If it hadn't been for those meddlesome Guardians, this world would be mine!" Pitch ranted angrily as he continued to crush various flower buds beneath his feet, like a young child throwing a temper tantrum. _He's so vile,_ Jack thought in disgust. Abruptly, Pitch froze in the middle of his angry hissing, and a slow, evil smile crept across his face. "This would could _still_ be mine," he realized aloud, leaning down to pluck a flower shoot from the grassy clearing. He held it up, turning it over slowly in his hands with an evil snicker. "Yes… _Yes…_ That's it! I can cast the world in darkness by draining it of its life… its warmth… its _spring._ Even if those Guardians are still around, the world will slowly rot into despair and fear if it is trapped in an eternal winter!" he grinned evilly, and the fresh flower bud crunched in his hand as he savagely crushed it in his fist. Before Jack could burst on the scene and confront him, he cackled evilly and vanished into the shadows. Even after his form had melted into the blackness, his evil laughed remained, echoing through the trees until fading up into the blue sky. Jack jumped out into the clearing, as if he could still catch him, and then sighed deeply as he kneeled down to gently pluck the mangled flower bud from the green grass layer.

"That can't be good," he murmured and looked up to the place where Pitch had vanished. _If he's on the loose again, he must be devising some evil scheme. What could he have possibly meant by 'taking away the world's spring'?"_ he wondered as he stood up, tucking the little crushed flower into the pocket of his frosty blue hoodie. He turned his head as Jamie came crawling out of the bushes, looking around with scared eyes.

"Pitch Black is back," he whispered fearfully.

"Seems like it. Come on. We had better get you guys home, if he's lurking around here," he mumbled and walked over to the little boy, placing a hand on his back to begin guiding him up the hill. Jamie grabbed onto his hoodie, eyes still wide with concern.

"The Guardians aren't gonna let Pitch do what he wants, right? You gotta!" he cried. Jack snorted with laughter and affectionately ruffled his brown hair, smiling broadly and nodding. That seemed to reassure the boy well enough, and so he began to dash up the hill, panting heavily. As the little boy ran off, Jack's smile wavered; he felt guilty, telling such a bold-face lie. Taking down Pitch nearly destroyed the Guardians the last time; he couldn't guarantee anything, really. He looked down at his hoodie, pulling out the little mangled flower that had tried to hard to grow. _… We have to win, no matter what! I can't let Pitch spread the darkness._

After Jack had safely delivered the children home, the sun was beginning to sink below the horizon. It was imperative that he head to the North Pole immediately, to reports the news to North and the other Guardians, but something inside Jack told him to linger. Twirling his staff in his hand like a baton, he strolled across the forest floor, leaving frosty footsteps in his wake; it was strange, walking across the soft, loamy ground, when he was so used to the soft crunch of snow. He tapped a tree occasionally, leaving fern-like patterns weaving across the bark, his signature mark. His feet carried him to the lake, the lake in which he had been born, the lake that was now glittering with light as gentle waves lapped at the sandy shore. It was a stark contrast to the mirror-like sheet of ice that was so perfect for ice skating. He walked to the edge of the lake, staring down into the blue water, watching little minnows swim about.

Jack had never given much thought to spring. He was the incarnation of winter, after all; it was theoretically his job to transition the warm, lovely summer into the cool, brusque chill of fall. If anything, spring was his enemy.

Still, he could not deny that standing there, watching the light play across the water as the sun dove below the growing canopy of the forest with the warm breeze flowing over him, it felt _nice._ He smiled weakly. _The children love spring, too. As a Guardian, it's my job to save it, then._ He was about to turn to leave when he noticed strange in the water, a reflection on the opposite bank. He watched it shift for a moment, unfocused, before it briefly took the form of a young woman in a brilliant white dress with golden hair. He gasped, his head snapping up to look at the opposite bank, but she wasn't there. _Am I imagining things now?_ He wondered, staring at the tree line for a moment. No one emerged, and so he just wrote it off as a trick of his mind. He whipped his staff around, throwing up a wind to carry him to the North Pole, and grinned widely as he rode it into the sky.

 _Look out, Pitch! We'll be coming for you soon enough!_


	3. Chapter 2: The Guardians Gather

"'Scuse me, 'scuse me, comin' through," Jack sighed heavily as he shoved his way between the two massive Yetis who were currently standing in the wooden doorway to North's winter wonderland workshop. He squeezed through the hairy bodies, emerging on the other side with a disgruntled expression, spitting Yeti hairs out of his mouth and shaking them out of his snowy white hair, and smelled his dull blue hoodie to find that it now carried the unappealing musk that the beast's boasted. Giving himself a final shake to dislodge any lingering Yeti hairs, he propped his staff on his shoulder and set off across the workshop to find the spirit of Christmas.

North's workshop was an architectural wonder. The building itself was a gigantic dome, completely constructed of stone with a magnificent vaulted ceiling above Jack's head. The center of the dome was open, where the massive globe sat as the centerpiece on the ground floor, golden lights twinkling and indicating a child that had faith in the guardians. On that floor was also the strange pedestal where the man in the moon related messages to them, and the little shrine-like area where Jack had been inaugurated as a proper Guardian. On the walls were the levels of the workshop proper, where Yetis were hard at work and elves were running around pretending to be useful. On one of these floors was a door that led into another section of the expansive network of the North Pole, North's own personal workshop, where he did his delighted tinkering and inventing. Jack skipped up some wooden steps to carry him up to the second floor, working his way towards that very destination.

Jack strolled across the wooden planks of the floor, looking around with no shortage of appreciation. North's toy factory had always amazed him. Yetis sat hunched over tables, carefully stitching smiles onto rag dolls' cloth faces, painstakingly assembling the mechanical gears of toy trains, and winding the springs in little plastic race cars with a surprising level of attention to detail and expertise considering their brawn and dumb appearance. Little elves, dressed in red and green suits with little bells jingling on their pointed, curled hoods, toddled about beneath the tables and between the Yetis feet, snickering mischievously as they unbalanced the much larger creatures before scurrying off lest they be on the receiving end of an angry beast's wrath. They absconded with strings of lights and set to winding them around random things, plugging them in and "ooh"-ing and "aah"-ing at the beautifully illuminated colors. Others were sitting in corners stuffing their faces with cookies of all types- iced sugar, chocolate chip, gingerbread. Quite a few had already been claimed by stomachaches, and were lying on the floor groaning and contemplating their poor life choices.

Jack passed into the toy-testing section of the workshop, which was in an even deeper state of chaos. Toy airplanes, their propellers whirling and their engines whirring, sailed above Jack's head just below the vaulted wooden ceiling. Train tracks were assembled all throughout the room, causing Jack to tread carefully and even duck his head to avoid bumping into the meticulously constructed network of tracks, where model steam engines were chugging away. At a table, a miserable Yeti was winding up Jack-in-the-boxes, jumping violently each time the little clown sprung up and laughed maniacally. Jack found it immensely amusing, but also felt bad for the poor creature.

After wandering through several levels of the workshop, Jack finally arrived at the small little hallway that connecting the larger workshop to North's sanctum. As he strolled down the dark hall, he found the door slightly ajar, and he stuck his head in with wide blue eyes and tapped his staff against the heavy wooden door. It made resounding _thunk-thunk_ sounds.

"North? You in here?" he called. It was honestly hard to see the burly Russian man, because his workshop was even more chaotic than the central one. Rows upon rows of shelves lined the room, stuffed to capacity with generations' worth of North's prized toys. An elaborate model of a discovery-era wooden ship sat next to a shiny plastic rendition of a bi-plane. A boxy robot with a panel of multicolored lights and an antenna sticking out of its square head was sitting next to a fluffy, friendly-looking teddy hear. A pogo stick was propped up against a tricycle on a large shelf that was at the bottom of the scaffolding. Along with the shelves, there were towers of books stacked around, about waist-high. An elaborate tapestry had fallen halfway down from where it had been mounted against the stone wall, draping its rich purple and golden hues over a stack of books.

Beyond that chaos was where the magic happened. North's workshop was carved into the face of a glacier itself, and stone and wood gave way to pure, crystalline ice, carved into beautiful arches to shape a little alcove. A simple workbench was placed here, cluttered with designs drawn on paper and gears and half-assembled contraptions. The ice was ever-encroaching, frosting the floor to form a mirror-like layer of ice that reflected the beautiful chaos of the room around it. It even danced in the air, little snowflakes drifting about and landing into Jack's hair; maybe he was just romanticizing the dust floating around. Though one would imagine the place to be dark, it was quite the opposite; a large section had been carved out of the ice wall and an ornate window placed there, so that North could look out at the tundra where various other buildings had been nestled into the ice. It was a beautiful sight at night, where the sky, unpolluted by the smog of civilization, blazed in all its brilliance with thousands of stars, and the surface world glistened with the golden light of the workshop, burning the midnight oil, working day and night to prepare for the beloved holiday.

"North?" Jack called again, louder, and pushed the door open all the way to stroll into the small nook. He then jumped nearly out of his pale skin when the man came shambling out of the bowels of the workshop, appearing suddenly from between two shelves.

"Jack! My boy! You are just in time! Come, come, I have something to show you!" he beamed in his thick accent, a giant hand beckoning the comparably small boy to approach his bench. With a grunt, he shoved all the little articles aside to clear a suitable amount of space on his bench before planting some mechanical contraption on the bench.

"Uh, North, I have something pretty important to tell you," Jack frowned as he hesitantly walked over to the bench, but North just threw a very muscular tattooed around his shoulders and pulled him so close that Jack thought his ribs might crack.

"This will only take moment," North assured before pointing down at the little machine, which Jack now recognized to be a robotic puppy. With a giggle, the man flipped a switch in the middle of it's back and the puppy abruptly burst into life, barking happily and wagging its tail. It moved with surprising fluidity, running around in a circle and crouching down to wiggle its mechanical behind at Jack, a little iron tongue lolling out of his mouth. "Isn't he cute? I call him Gizmo," the manly man chortled, then laughed in glee as the puppy scampered over to him and began hopping up at his thick chest, barking and demanding to be cuddled. North's booming laughter echoed through the small room as he picked up the tiny mechanical puppy in one hand to bring it to his face, and his giggled uncontrollably as it licked him happily. _It's almost hard to believe it's the same sword-wielding Russian hero,_ Jack thought as he watched the man dissolve into his delighted fit. He set the puppy down to allow it to scamper around the workshop before putting his hands on his hips and turning to look at Jack. "Now, what is it you needed to tell me!"

"Oh!" Jack exclaimed. He had quite forgotten for the moment having been caught up in North's demonstration. "Pitch Black! Jamie and I saw Pitch!" he cried and reached up to grab the burly man's shoulder. "He's planning something. We heard it!" he insisted when his expression turned mildly doubtful.

"Hmmm…" He murmured and ran a hand through his snowy beard thoughtful. "I will call other Guardians," he decided after a moment of contemplation.

Not long after, Jack was sitting on top of the slowly spinning globe, while the rest of the Guardians had just gathered. As they exchanged the obligatory greetings, Jack stood up and drifted down to the snow-covered floor, glancing up to the giant window in the dome of the building that gave a clear view of the full moon, and indicator that the silent but ever-present Man in the Moon was avidly observing the gathering. "All right, Jack. Tell us what you saw and heard," North instructed. Jack swung his staff in his hands as he paced about, recalling the occurrence in his mind to relate it to the other Guardians.

"Jamie and I came across Pitch in the woods outside Burgess. He didn't know we were there, so we heard everything. He was kind of vague, but he talked about 'bringing darkness to the world by taking away its spring,'" he related. He still wasn't quite sure what to make of it. _How can you take away spring, anyway?_ A ripple of gasps went across the group.

"It hasn't even been a year, and he's already crawled out of his pit to bother us again?" Bunnymund grumbled in his Australian drawl, crossing his furry arms and angrily tapping his long rabbit foot, making the boomerang at his hip bump repeatedly against his leg. Sandy put a hand over his mouth, the little emotive sand dancing above his head to produce a rendition of the nightmarish horses they had faced in the last paramount battle.

"I don't like the sound of this," Toothiana fretted nervously, fluttering about while her little fairies buzzed in orbit around her and chittered in high frequency. "If there's no spring, the world will be cast in eternal darkness! The world will essentially halt, and not even our efforts will be able to keep hope in the children," she murmured and looked nervously at the globe, as if expecting it to flicker out at any moment.

"How could he even take spring in the first place?" Jack demanded impatiently. That was the most important part of the riddle. Before any of the other Guardians could answer, moonlight suddenly poured into the window, falling across the crystal pedestal beneath the wide window. As if called, the Guardians gathered around it, watching with interest as a shape formed in the glistening white light. Jack's white eyebrows shot up to his forehead when he recognized the shape of the beautiful woman he had seen walking through the night a few days before, bringing flowers where she had walked and singing that hauntingly familiar melody to no one.

"Mother Nature! Of course!" Bunnymund exclaimed, slamming a fisted paw into the palm of the other.

"Mother Nature?" he echoed, looking at him, completely perplexed. Toothiana fluttered over to his other side, holding her hands together as she smiled brightly.

"Mother Nature is the one who brings spring! She's a beauuuuuutiful young lady, with golden hair that shines like the rising sun and fair skin that glows with the warmth of life," she sighed in admiration. _Whoa. So she's a big fan,_ Jack thought as he edged away from the gushing fairy, mildly uncomfortable.

"So you all know who she is? How come I've never met her?" he frowned, crossing his arms and puffing out his cheeks in distaste. _Does she not like me?_ He wondered. The Guardians all avoided the question with a myriad of shrugs and uncomfortable looks, and even though they obviously knew something, he knew that he wasn't going to get it out of them. _I'm just gonna have to ask her myself, then._ "Right. So if she brings the spring, then its obvious that Pitch is gonna go after her, right? So why don't we just tell her?"

"Well, 'ere's the thing about Mother Nature, mate. She's a mite shy," Bunnymund explained carefully.

"It is true. Bunny is only one who has actually _talked_ to her. We have only seen her in passing," North added. Sandy nodded emphatically in agreement, then looked at the Easter rabbit with the sandy image of a house swirling above his head, asking where the elusive woman might reside. Bunnymund frowned and cocked his head to the side, his ears flopping as he racked his mind.

"Well, this one time she did mention somethin' about Angel Falls. It's the tallest waterfall in the world, deep in the jungles of Venezuela," he recalled with a doubtful expression. To Jack, it was a good start. As he gripped his staff tightly and lightly jumped up into the window, they all chorused in protest. "Aye, mate, where ya goin'?"

"We have not decided what to do yet!" North added with a stern look, pointing at the floor in a clear sign for Jack to get his skinny behind back to the gathering. He ignored it.

"It's clear we gotta find this girl, right? So I'm gonna go find her," he grinned cheekily before hopping put of the window, laughing as he heard then groaning and shouting behind them. The wind whirled beneath him, carrying him over the wintery landscape as it bore him to the south. Truth be told, he was curious about the mysterious woman; since that night he had seen her beautiful form in the dark, he had wanted to know who she was, and why she had never introduced herself to him as essentially his counterpart. As he sailed through the night sky, he conjured an image of the golden-haired beauty in his mind.

 _Mother Nature, huh?_


	4. Chapter 3: Mother Nature

As Jack spiraled down from the clear blue sky towards the emerald earth below, he could hear nothing over the tremendous thundering of the water cascading from the cliffside to splash into the massive pool hundreds of feet below. White, frothy foam bubbled at the point of impact, swirling through the crystal clear water like soap. Just feet from the rocky shore of the pool, the forest encroached, towering trees stretching their leafy branches to the sky while ferns and bushes hugged their thick trunks and roots, broad leaves catching the sunlight wherever possible. He landed beside the water, his bare feet digging into the soft, loamy earth for a brief second before it froze solid beneath his toes. He inhaled the deep forest air, savoring the scent of rich fruits and flowers mingling with earth and decay, then propped himself up on his staff.

"Now, where would a nature spirit hide around here?" he wondered aloud, swinging his staff around as he began poking around the massive waterfall. The water droplets shooting through the air froze into little diamond droplets as they splashed onto his clothes and hair; he left icy footprints where he walked, meandering around the edge of the pool to inspect crevices in rocks and pull up rotting logs, watching as the bugs scattered to find another dank, dark hole. He found plenty of centipedes and spiders and beetles, and dark holes, but no sign of the beautiful, golden-haired woman he sought. With an irritated huff, he whirled around and shouted up at the booking waterfall, "Oi! Mother Nature! You out here?" His voice bounced through the small clearing, his only answer his own echo. He stomped over to the rocky cliff coated in moss and stubborn clinging plants to lean up against it with his arms crossed, snorting. "Where _are_ you?"

He took a few minutes to fume silently before he pushed himself away from the wall, unable to think straight with the constant tremendous drumming of the gushing water. He craned his neck to gaze up at the impressive height of the waterfall, until his eyebrows knit together when a sudden thought occurred to him. _Could there be something behind the waterfall?_ He wondered. All of the Guardians had homes in securely hidden, off-the-wall places, after all; it would not be unreasonable, given the massive size of the cliff from which the waterfall poured, for there to be an expansive cavern hidden behind the streaming water. Thus, Jack swirled his staff and allowed the cold wind to bear him into the air, shooting alongside the endless stream.

Stray droplets rained down onto him as he peered behind the sheet of foaming water, but all he could discern was the same slick, dark rock. When he was about halfway up, he was beginning to grow discouraged, until the rough surface suddenly vanished. Beyond the water, the wall abruptly caved in into a spacious cave-like opening. _Finally!_ Carefully, using the slippery rock as a foothold, he wormed his way into the thin gap between the cave and the thundering water. Somehow, he managed to squeeze through without slipping, though his hair and clothes now contained a thin frost from the sheer amount of water had been poured onto him. He shook his head, sending snowflakes fluttering in the gloom. Only a little light filtered through the waterfall, sending white lines dancing across the moss-slicked cave floor; however, the back of the cave was shrouded in deep darkness. Cautiously, he descended into the murkiness, holding his staff aloft as the darkness embraced him.

As he pressed further into the cave, the rhythmic drumming of the waterfall faded and was replaced by the fall of his footsteps echoing in the gloom. The air was cold and heavy with moisture, causing his breath to fog up in front of his face. It felt like he was shuffling through the dark for an eternity, and was wondering if this was going to be a dead end, until suddenly there was a glimmer of light in the distance. "Bingo!" he grinned and shot towards it. The ball of light rapidly expanded until it swallowed him, and it was so bright that he had to squeeze his eyes shut and shield his face with a hand lest he be blinded. His lashes fluttered repeatedly for a moment as his eyes gradually adjusted to the glaring light, and as he did so an amazing image emerged. "Wooooow!" he breathed as he lowered his arm, his eyes wide with wonder.

The cave had led to a gigantic circular cavern hewn into the inside of the cliffs, a hemisphere hundreds of feet in diameter, but the stone was not just dark like outside, but carved with rivers of white calcification from the high level of moisture. Stalactites and stalagmites and columns spanned the impressive height, making the room seem like some elaborate throne room. At the peak of the dome, the ceiling had fallen away, leaving a large hole open to the world above. Vines crawled over the edge and clung desperately to the ceiling. The light that filled the spacious room originated from this point, as well as a few other holes dotted here and there in the stone ceiling. That wasn't the most impressive thing, though.

Planted in the center of the cavern was the largest tree that Jack had ever seen in his life. The tree's trunk was absolutely massive, so large that _five_ of him probably couldn't embrace the entire circumference. Its branches were as thick as the trunks of the trees outside, curling and twisting like corkscrews across the ceiling and through the air and even bending down to crawl along the stone floor. Smaller branches sprouted from the thick main branches, and smaller ones sprung from those, making a dense network. The leaves, about the size of his hand, were rich emerald and shining in the sunlight. Strange, glittering fruits were nestled within, perfectly spherical and gourmet feet in diameter. Jack scampered over to the nearest one, contained within a bend in one of the thick branches, and was amazed to find that they were not fruits at all; rather, they were portals of some kind.

"Amazing!" he breathed as he brought his face close to the portal-like sphere, the surface rippling with his breath like a bubble. Within the sphere was an entire _world,_ a beautiful coral reef stretching across blue-grey stone. The corals were dyed red, blue, purple, yellow, green, and every shade in-between, with structures that varied just as much- branches and fans and brains and shapes he couldn't even describe. The squishy stingers of anemones flowed back and forth in the gentle water current, and Jack was delighted to see little orange-and-white clownfish flitting between them. Other colorful fishes swam in schools across the reef, an eel poked its snake-like head out of a hole, an octopus scuttled across the rocky floor, starfish clung to the rocks and corals- even a sea turtle slowly glided by, like a guardian enduring the peace of its sanctum. Jack's blue eyes shimmered with the light playing through the water, and almost entranced, he found himself reaching out to touch it. His hand did not meet resistance with the barrier, however; it melted through the thin, malleable surface to slip into the water, and he felt the coolness of it spreading across his hand. He pulled his hand out and was astonished to find that it was not wet, and a grin slowly spread across his face. Without further ado, he shoved his head into the strange ball.

His head emerged from a sizable crevice within the rocks, and his hair floated around him as he turned his head from side to side. His appearance had startled the fish around him, sending them scattering like marbles, but after a few minutes they grew more curious than afraid and ventured over to inspect the strange boy. He laughed as they nipped at his frosty-white hair and swam in front of his face, and his giggles sent them fleeing once more. After a few more minutes of enjoying the underwater haven, he pulled his head out of the sphere to return to the task at hand. He walked toward the base of the tree, stepping over the roots that had cracked through the rocky earth and maneuvering through the sprawling branches, all while investigating the strange portal spheres. He saw an African savanna, a dense jungle, an Antarctic tundra, a scorching desert, and several kinds of forests. As he grew closer to the heart of the tree, he began to see more and more species of animals he did not recognize; they were funny-looking, and a lot bigger. He jumped back from one, a sphere containing swirling snow and an icy glacier, when he saw a wooly mammoth trudging through the snow. He peered into it, watching in awe as a pack of sabre-tooth tigers sprung out from behind some rocks to begin chasing after the large elephant-like creature. "What the-? What _is_ this tree?" he cried and dashed forward, jumping up in the air to follow the spheres further into the dense treetop. He landed on one thick branch next to one sphere with an open plain, and his jaw dropped when he saw _dinosaurs_ dashing across the short grass. "Cool! If only Jamie could see this!" he snickered and jumped down. Though he would love to explore the portals, he had a job to do.

As he landed back on the rough, rocky ground and glanced at the thick trunk, he was finally close enough to discover that a multi-room cottage had been built around the massive tree. It was made of soft, creamy brown wood with cream-colored accents, shutters and the like. Its roof tiles were a darker shade. Jack could see light blazing within the marbled glass windows, but because of the pattern he could not see anything inside. Outside the cottage was a gazebo of white metal, with crawling ivy with large white flowers in bloom. On that gazebo was a set of two plush, grey chairs and a small gray table, in one of those chairs sat the woman Jack had been trying to find.

She sat with a book in her small hands, her face turned downward as she read silently. All he could hear was the occasional turn of the page. Jack cautiously crept closer, his staff clutched in his hand; he could only barely see her, and she obviously did not know that he was there; he didn't want to startle her, but in case he did he certainly did not want to be caught unawares. As he came around the edge of the lawn to look into the opening of the awning, his heart stopped in his chest. She was _looking_ at him, staring at him with eyes like pure emeralds, her golden hair shining around her.

"Did you enjoy the Tree of Life?" she asked him. Jack was struck by how _beautiful_ her voice sounded; it matched the rest of her, soft and sweet as North's silver bells. He stood there for a moment, captivated, while a small smile appeared on her pink lips and she snapped the book shut, jarring him out of his stupor.

"O-oh. Yes," he stammered shyly, glancing up at the impressive plant. "The Tree of Life?" he echoed.

"Yes. It is the record of all life since the beginning of time, and I am its keeper," she explained. "Those portals lead to biomes that are representative of different points in time, both past and present." Jack bit down on his knuckles slightly as the elation bubbled up inside of him again, and a pink haze appeared on her cheeks as he hopped into the gazebo to gesture wildly at the tree with his staff.

"So, you have _every animal ever_ here?" When she nodded, he laughed giddily and danced around slightly, running a hand through his hair. "Oh, man, I gotta bring Jamie here! Man, he would _love_ this! Wait, wait, what about mythical creatures? You got those?" he babbled, whirling back on her and causing her to jump.

"Yes, I do," she smiled and rose from her chair and waved for him to follow her as she stepped out of the gazebo. He scampered after her, avoiding the flowing train of her white dress as she walked out into the grass. He found that she was barefoot as well, and little flowers sprouted where she strode. She walked up to the trunk of the tree and placed her hand on the bark, and to his shock the tree began to _move,_ its branches writhing and shifting positions. One of them dove down to settle itself in front of her, a sphere perched against the wood, and she waved him over. Jack approached the sphere and peered inside to see a forest clearing, and contained with a shining white unicorn grazing in the grass. His lips parted slightly as he gazed at it in pure wonder, and when he looked at Mother Nature, she was smiling brightly and proudly. "Who is Jamie?" she inquired as she touched the tree again, sending it back to its original position, and he smiled bashfully.

"Oh. He's a little boy I'm friends with… He's real big into mythical creatures, and he would have a _ball_ with this place," he snickered, leaning on his staff. Now that the initial excitement was over, he finally had the presence of mind to really _look_ at her. "You know, you're pretty young-looking for someone they call _Mother_ Nature," he frowned. Truly, she looked no older than he did. She blushed again and looked away.

"I'm only one in a long line of Mother Natures. I inherited the title four hundred years ago. The Earth appoints us to guide life's progression and record it, and, if necessary, protect it," she explained. "I am also responsible for the coming of spring, the renewal of life each year." As she mentioned the season, he suddenly remembered why he was there in the first place.

"Oh! Speaking of, Mot- no, that's weird. I'm calling you something else. Can I call you… Nat? Yeah, I'm calling you Nat. Anyway! You're in big trouble!" he cried and grabbed her by the shoulder, shaking her a little. Her eyes fluttered rapidly as she struggled to comprehend his stream of babble, until she finally narrowed her eyes at him.

"Trouble? Whatever do you mean?"

"It's Pitch Black! I overheard him hatching a plan to 'rid the world of its spring,' and so the other Guardians sent me to come get you so we can keep you safe." At the mention of the Bogeyman, her expression grew sour, and she pulled herself away from him to march toward her cabin. "Um, where are you going?" he asked as he scurried after her.

"So, Pitch thinks that he can defeat me, does he?" she snorted, ignoring him as she threw the door to the cabin open and stomped inside. He poked his head into the threshold, his eyes following her movement to a fireplace. She plucked a bow from a mount about the hearth, one made of dark ebony, and grabbed a quiver of arrows from a hanging hook. As she whirled around, her golden hair and white dress spun with her. "Well, I think he'll find that I'm quite a bit tougher than I look." _I like her spirit,_ he thought with a smirk as she haughtily stomped back out of the building, red roses springing up where she walked. _Do the flowers change with her moods?_ He thought with a grin. "To be honest, Nat, I didn't think it would be that easy. Bunny said you were shy. Is that why I've never seen you in four hundred years?" he asked casually, and as the words left his mouth, she stiffened. _That's weird._

"… I just don't get out much. I have to keep constant guard over the Tree of Life. It is the lifeblood of the Earth, not just a record. If anything happens to it, then the Earth will freeze in time. Crops will yield little, animals will give less and less meat, and the Dark Ages will return," she answered, but despite the logic he could tell that she was withholding something from him. However, before he could inquire, she summoned an orb from the tree again. She leaned forward, whispering into it in an ancient language, then retreated. "You may want to step back," she warned as he tried to walk closer and inspect it, and when he moved to look at her he cried out when a massive reptilian head shoved it's way out of the bubble.

"You have a _dragon?_ " he shouted as the gigantic winged lizard slithered out of the sphere, rapidly growing larger as it exited the portal. It towered nearly as high as the tree itself, its scales as emerald as Nat's eyes. Its thick legs stood on either side of Jack as he craned his neck to gaze up at it in sheer awe, while its tail slithered back and forth over the rocky earth. Its bat-like wings were folded against its side, and when it's long neck twisted around so it could look at him, golden eyes bored deep into his soul. Its forked tongue flickered out of its maw to lick him, and he wriggled at the strange, tickling sensation. "Hey!" he snickered. The dragon exhaled deeply, blowing white smoke into the air before it looked at Nat.

"This is Salazar. He guards the Tree while I am away," she smiled as she reached up and stroked the dragon's face. The ground rumbled from the ferocity of its purring, like a gigantic cat. Then, after being caressed for a few moments, it slipped away to curl protectively around the cabin and tree. Jack held a hand out for her, to which she responded with a quizzical look.

"We have to fly to the North Pole."

"Who said I needed your help to fly?" she smiled wryly, and placed her fingers in her mouth to whistle shrilly. A loud neigh responded, and Jack glanced up as he heard the leaves rustling wildly. From the emerald green burst a white shape, and he grinned elatedly as a pegasus soared around the top of the tree before descending and landing primly in front of Nat. She climbed up onto the beautiful white winged horse, slinging the bow and quiver over her back. The horse tossed its head, flipping its long white mane about, before she smirked at him. "After you."

Jack grinned before flipping his staff and summoning the winds, shooting upwards to soar above the giant tree through the hole in the cave top. He glanced down to see the horse galloping through the air after him, with Nat perched on his back with her golden hair streaming in the wind.

 _Well, mission accomplished. I wonder what will happen next?_


	5. Chapter 4: What Lies Ahead

_Nat… Of all the things he could call me, it had to be_ _ **that,**_ Nathalie thought with pursed lips as she cast a sidelong glance at the jovial winter spirit flying on the swirling, icy winds beside her. She had not been called by such a name in four hundred years; it was almost an unprecedented coincidence. Still, she had better things to dwell on, such as the fact that the notorious Bogeyman desired her for some nefarious plot. Her fingers tightened around the strands of her pegasus' streaming mane as she imagined what his fell purpose could entail. _Ridding the world of its spring to plunge the world into an eternal winter… It is foul indeed._ As the guardian of the world's life and warmth, she could not allow such a thing to pass.

"You're thinking awfully hard." She glanced over to see the young, white-haired man sailing along beside her, stretched out on his back with his hands behind his head while the winds held him aloft. Her mouth twitched slightly in displeasure and she tossed her head, her golden hair rippling like a curtain waving in a gentle breeze.

"The threat upon this world is not something I take lightly. It requires much contemplation."

"You talk weird," he snickered and rolled over onto his belly, kicking his legs while he propped his head in his hands. Nathalie's cheeks took on a red hue as she stared at him incredulously. "You definitely sound as old as you are."

"Hasn't anyone ever told you not to comment on a woman's age?" she snapped acidly, and before he could offer another ridiculous remark, she lightly kicked her pegasus' haunches to coax more speed out of him. His brilliant white wings, which had been extended to ride the trade winds, responded by flapping vigorously to propel him suddenly forward and away from the uncouth youth. His hooves struck the empty air ass if he were galloping, but instead of striking hard earth they plowed into soft, forgiving clouds. She could hear Jack's laughter echoing behind her as the winged horse bore her through the sky. _How rude! I do not talk strange!_ She fumed silently.

"Aw, Nat, I'm sorry. Did I make you mad?" She squeaked as he suddenly appeared on her left, now lying on his side as he gazed at her amused yet apologetic. She certainly was in no mood to accept, and tugged on the beautiful streams of her horse's hair to force it to bank, sending it in a downward curve toward the surface. Jack seemed unperturbed by her obvious efforts to evade him and dropped down, flying in a circle around the horse before landing lightly on its haunches in a crouch. "I didn't mean to insult you!" he insisted as he batted at her writhing curls of golden hair, which had taken on lives of their own and were striking at the pale boy like snakes. Affronted that he would dare land upon her beloved steed, she whipped around to roughly shove him off, sending him tumbling head-over-heels into the open air. He somersaulted a few times before righting himself with a laugh, while Nathalie glared at him with rosy cheeks.

"I am insulted!" _Who does he think he is? He has no business being so plucky! The fate of the world hangs in the balance, yet he is treating it as a game- and insulting me! He certainly doesn't need to look so cute doing it, either!_ As that particular thought raced through her mind, she immediately stiffened, her face transitioning to a bright shade of apple-red. _She_ had no business thinking such things. Grumbling about her own incompetence, she once again struck the sides of her horse with her bare heels, making him whinny and dive down to the world below. The endless canvas of sapphire blue sea and rocky green and brown continents had given away to a blanket of pure white ice, shining with the intensity of a star as it reflected the brilliant rays of the sun. Nestled at the very peak of the Earth was a cluster of buildings half-buried in pillowy snow, with golden lights twinkling against the bleak backdrop like a strange, foreign ship. Undoubtedly, it was the toy workshop of Nicholas Saint North. As she gazed upon it, Nathalie could not help but be amazed by its splendor. _It's beautiful._

As her pegasus landed on the cobblestone pathway leading to the door, his hooves chinking against the thin mirror of ice slicking the ground, a pair of yetis lumbered out of the massive oaken door to shamble over and gesture toward a small building not far away, likely a stable where North also kept his reindeer. Jack landed beside her and offered a hand to help her down from the horse, but she ignored the extended hand to swing down from her steed. Her effort to seem dignified and able was wasted, however; when her bare feet met the cold ice, the thin layer melted into frigid water and caused her to slip. As she wobbled with her arms waving frantically to try and regain her balance, Jack caught her by the waist and gently steadied her. She glanced over her shoulder to see him smiling brightly and kindly, and once again her cheeks took on a rosy tint. That smile dazzled her more than the glistening lights of the legendary workshop, and she momentarily forgot that she was displeased with his rude commentary.

"Are you all right?" he asked her gently. She swallowed nervously and straightened up, sweeping the disarrayed ribbons of her golden hair from her face as she regained her composure.

"Yes, I am. Thank you," she answered primly and turned as the yetis led her noble horse into the stables. _I suppose I can forgive him for his rudeness. Now, for the task at hand._ Her back straight and her head high, she strode purposefully into the gigantic workshop. Immediately, her emerald eyes were captured by the wonders within. Nathalie had never laid eyes upon the magnificent structure before, and its interior was nearly as splendorous as the exterior. A winding staircase trailed up the spherical room, interrupted by the circular work floors where the yetis were hard at work. Nathalie's predecessor had conjured the furry creatures for North to serve as his assistants. The elves had been a product of human imagination that were thought so cute that they were also willed into being- but had ended up comically stupid. She raised an eyebrow as one waddled by trailing a string of colored lights, no doubt up to some foolish mischief for he was snickering uncontrollably.

"This way," Jack instructed as he strolled by her, his staff propped against his shoulder and fern-like ice patterns swirling across the floor where he walked. Rather than follow him immediately, she kneeled down to trace a finger along one of the flowing swirls, but as soon as it met her touch it dissolved like butter upon bread. Nathalie was barred from ever knowing the soft touch of snow or the glass-like sensation of ice against her skin. Nathalie had not experienced such things in four hundred years. With a small sigh, she rose and followed after the winter spirit.

He led her into the heart of the workshop, where a gigantic globe was slowly spinning. Little golden lights were clustered upon its surface. _This must be the globe that Bunnymund told me about, where each light signifies a child with faith in the Guardians._ In the curved wall sat a massive window with a clear view of the tundra, and moonlight streamed through it to pour across the patterned stone floor. It was styled in a compass, but rather than the four cardinal directions each point of the star dictated south. As she glanced back up through the window, the clouds were parting to reveal a large full moon. It seemed that the Man in the Moon had appeared to bear witness to Nathalie's arrival.

"Ah! Wonderful! You have arrived!" a booming voice resounded through the quiet domed room, and Nathalie turned as a burly man with tattoos inked into his massive arms came lumbering in. Despite his impressive size, his frosty blue eyes glimmered jovially above his large nose and silky white beard. Nathalie dipped her head respectfully to him.

"It is nice to finally meet you, Saint North." As she raised her head, the Easter Bunny came hopping out from behind him, his boomerang jangling at his hip as his powerful hind legs thumped against the polished floor. He came bounding up to her, standing at his full six-foot-something height once he reached her.

"G'day, Mother Nature. I hope that runt didn't give ya too much trouble," he smirked with a pointed look at the boy, who was perched on the top if the globe like some strange bird. Jack only rolled his eyes and made a face at the large jackrabbit.

"Her name is Nat now!" Jack called down, and before she could refute him, her trailing dress and cascading hair suddenly fluttered wildly with a sudden rush of wind.

"Nat? How beautiful! Tell me, are your teeth as gorgeous as the rest of you? Oh, let me see, let me see!" the Tooth Fairy babbled incessantly as she whirled around the startled girl with her hands clasped and eyes glistening. Her little fairies flitted among the folds of Nat's dress, cuddling the silky fabric, or buzzed around her hair, picking up the golden locks to admire them with loving coos.

"Tooth. That is enough," North ordered firmly. The green and blue feathered woman hung her head and sagged her shoulders guiltily.

"I'm sorry."

The Sandman tugged impatiently on North's sleeve to point at her, the sand above his head forming a garish specter of Pitch Black.

"Yes, yes, I am getting to that." Jack hopped down from the globe to stand behind her, twirling his staff in his head to plant it against the floor and lean against it. "I am sure Jack has told you?"

"Yes. You assume that Pitch is after me based on his intentions to 'rid the world of its spring.' Have you learned anything else?"

"Well, ya know how Pitch is. He ain't gonna be found unless he wants to," Bunnymund frowned deeply as he crossed his furry arms and furiously tapped his large foot. "We're gonna search high and low for 'im, but I betcha he we ain't gonna be able to force his hand."

"Do you have any idea with what he could want with you, Nat?" Toothiana frowned deeply as she fluttered nervously over North's shoulder.

"I am the guardian of the Tree of Life. Pitch knows this, if little else," she responded grimly. "If he were able to obtain its location, it would be quite easy for him to exact his plans. If the Tree of Life were to be harmed, what Pitch wishes will come to pass. The world will descend into a second Dark Age." It had been humans who had plunged the Earth into the first; before, the Tree of Life had been a sacred artifact, known to humans and readily accessible to them. They would bring offerings to Mother Nature for blessings of good harvests and aid in the domestication of animals and plants. Men had grown greedy, however, and in their avarice had warred over the worldly Tree. In that great conflict the Tree and its keeper both had suffered terrible wounds, and the consequences were reaped by men and relished by the devilish Bogeyman. While the Tree nursed itself back to health, it was hidden from the race of men so that never again could they desire its fruits. Hidden behind the thundering waterfall for hundreds of years, it had slowly replenished, pouring life back into the world after an age of winter and despair. The Guardians knew none of this, though; they had been born from this conflict but possessed no knowledge of it.

"How does he plan to do that, though? It's not like you'll just tell 'im," the Easter Bunny snorted with derision.

"I am linked to the Tree just as much as it is to me. If I sustain a mortal wound, the Tree's power will wither without Pitch needing to lay eyes upon it," she revealed quietly. "He will likely come for me rather than the Tree itself."

"Then it is simple, then! We will protect Nat! Pitch will not be able to lay hand on her," North insisted and flexed his arm to pat his bulging muscle. "Jack, you are Nat's bodyguard. We will handle Pitch."

"I object!" she exclaimed while Jack grinned from ear to ear. "I need no _bodyguard." Especially not_ _ **him**_ _!_ She finished silently with an icy glare at the winter spirit, who just shrugged with an amused smile.

"It is not up for discussion," the toymaker said sternly, and Nathalie slumped her shoulders, realizing that she would be unable to debate the issue. "We will rotate you between Guardians' homes to keep Pitch from finding you. First you will stay with Bunny."

"That's right! Easter is comin' up! I got work to do!" he nodded firmly with a look at Jack. "You'd better behave yourself or I'm gonna give you a swift kick to the keister."

"Come on! It'll be fun!" Jack beamed as he threw an arm languidly around the rabbit's shoulders.

 _This is not my idea of fun,_ Nathalie pouted as her fate was all but decided for her. She gave a sidelong glance at the beaming boy. _Jack Frost…_ It seemed her destiny had become entwined with the boy who was winter incarnate, her counterpart that she had avoided meeting for four hundred years. _What lies ahead for the two of us?_

She could not even imagine it.


	6. Chapter 5: Down the Rabbit Hole!

Nathalie was not discreet about her displeasure as she stood beside Bunnymund, arms crossed and expression dour.

"This is ridiculous. I am perfectly capable of defending myself. I do not need a _babysitter,_ " she snorted in derision, and as she uttered the words her eyes slid to Jack Frost, who was grinning brightly as he waved farewell to the little tooth fairies, fluttering out of the window behind their beautifully feathered master Toothiana. The other Guardians had elected to traverse the globe to attempt and root out Pitch Black, but Nathalie knew much better than that; the Bogeyman would remain hidden in his shadowy hole until the moment he wished to strike at her, and no amount of searching would reveal him. _On top of that, they leave me with_ _ **him**_ _of all people._ Nathalie had a multitude of reasons why she did not wish to spend an exuberant amount of time with the winter spirit. As Jack turned to her, his face scrunched up in a happy smile, she immediately felt the cold flush of guilt. _He_ _ **is**_ _going out of his way to ensure my safety… Personal reasons aside, I should be kind to him._ That was so hard, though, when he was an absolute goofball.

"Nat! Have you ever been to Bunny's rabbit hole?" he asked elatedly as he skipped on the wind over to her. Nat looked down as the brisk breeze brushed over her legs, which immediately evaporated the ice crystals into dewy droplets of water that clung to her skin.

"Yes. I was the one who designed the plants that assist him in his Easter duties. Before, he was painting eggs by hand," she informed him. Nat thought it was common knowledge, but the absolutely giddy look that appeared on Jack's face indicated otherwise; he looked at Bunnymund while leaning on his staff and practically radiating light. "It has been at least two or three hundred years since I have seen it, however."

"Wow, you weren't kidding when you said you don't get out much." Nat wrinkled up her nose in displeasure, a barbed retort blossoming on her tongue, but she swallowed it when the Easter Bunny hopped between them and impatiently tapped his large back foot repeatedly against the ground.

"All right, lovebirds, quit yer chit-chat. We got work to do!" Before Nathalie could chastise him for his quite improper use of the term " _lovebirds,"_ a chasm appeared beneath her feet and swallowed her up. She screamed as her behind met cold, rough earth and she began accelerating dangerously through what she frantically determined must be a rabbit tunnel. Abruptly something crashed into her back, and from the joyful laughter ringing in her eardrum she surmised that Bunnymund had purposefully included Jack in Nat's harrowing dirt-slide ride. She felt the boy push a handful of her whirling blonde hair aside to lean over her shoulder, causing her face to flush red instead of white with fright. Not to mention, he had his legs on either side of her with his chest pressed against her back, a quite improper position for a young lady and a young man in Nat's eyes.

"Isn't this fun?" he hollered over the roaring wind. "Come on, put your hands up! _Woohoo!"_ He did not give Nat a moment to comply in her own, but instead wrenched her arms above her head and waved them about. Nathalie's heart jumped into her throat as her fingertips skimmed the rounded dirt ceiling, sending clumps of the damp earth raining down into her fine hair and onto her not-so-pristine-anymore white dress. For a moment she shrieked in panic, her heels sliding into the natural slide in an attempt to act as some sort of brake, and she was quite sure that this was not _fun_ but borderline _insane_ , but then the tunnel curved into a sharp turn. As she and Jack were thrust sideways by the forces acting upon them, Nat's body jerked and the wind rushed around her, and she found her screams morphing into increasingly giddy laughs. She wasn't sure at which moment it occurred, but her arms remained raised of her own volition and Jack's arms wound themselves around her waist, and she could hear his boyish laughs mingling in the air with her own. Watching the earth wall rapidly recede around her, blurred forms of tree roots and rocks blending with the endless brown smudge, and feeling the wind whisk away her voice while the adrenaline pumped through her veins had taken on some kind of exhilarating nature. Her pitch heightened with a gleeful shriek each time they hit a turn, as her body bumped about alongside Jack's.

"This _is_ fun!" she shouted at him finally, turning to face him with a face now red from breathless wonder. As he cocked his head slightly to beam at her his chin bushed against her shoulder, and Nat was painfully reminded of why she hadn't wanted to get close to Jack in the first place.

The tunnel around them suddenly vanished and then she and Jack were sailing through the open air. It was hard to make out exactly what was what, because all of Nat's vision was just green with splashes of color against a swirling blue-and-white sky, but she knew they had arrived at Bunnymund's abode. "We're gonna crash!" she wailed when she realized the ground was rapidly rushing up to meet them, and momentarily terrified of a rough landing, she turned her body to throw her arms around Jack and bury her face into his blue hoodie. She heard him cry out in shock and flail about for a second, but following that did not come the jarring landing that Nat had expected; instead, it felt as if the winds changed directions to buoy her up, and she remained floating in the air like a feather upon the breeze. She cracked an eye open to see that was _exactly_ what had occurred, and Jack's signature freezing winds had kept them suspended and allowed them to reach the ground in a much less harrying manner. As Nat's bare feet met the lush grass, all of her tensed muscles relaxed at once and she felt relief flood through her.

That is, until she realized that she had her arms around Jack and he had his arms around her.

"You okay?" Though he was only checking on her well-being, his face got much too close for Nathalie's comfort, and she pushed him away with much more force than was probably necessary. "Hey, I was only-!" he protested as he staggered backwards, arms flailing, but Nat was too busy marching across the opposite side of the clearing to keep him from seeing her burning face. Her emotions were roiling in such a state that she could not think straight nor determine which emotion she was actually feeling at the moment; she felt the equivalent of a fish being fried by an electric eel, short-circuiting and sparking. As she viciously combed her fingers through her wind-swept hair and tried to gather her thoughts, Jack appeared over her shoulder again with knitted eyebrows. "Nat, are you okay?"

"Yes, I am quite fine, thank you, and would you stop calling me that?" The words came out with a lot more acid than she meant, and it seemed anger had decided to surface from the writhing sea of feelings swirling inside her. Jack flinched and looked hurt, tugging the guilt and sadness out of her next. It cooled her heated body and allowed clarity to flood through her mind, and she quickly stammered, "I'm sorry, Jack. I didn't mean it. I was just a little startled." Her mouth twitched and she looked away as she once more felt the blush tainting her cheeks. "A-and you can keep calling me 'Nat,' if you'd like. I don't dislike it." No, she didn't at all. The problem was that she liked it _too_ much.

"Oh, okay. I'm glad; I thought you were mad at me or something," he snickered, immediately discarding her outburst and twirling his staff to prop it on his shoulder while he glanced around. "Oi, Bunny, where are you?" While Jack preoccupied himself with locating their host, Nat was finally able to settle down and focus on their surroundings. Bunnymund's grove had indeed evolved in the few centuries since she had visited it, becoming a lush oasis of life. She wandered over to the edge of the clearing to crouch down and gently run her finger over the soft leaf of a curling plant, one of her design which allowed the little eggs to slip through and emerge with swirling patterns, as the plant absorbed the paint pigment where it touched. It had grown much larger from the little sprout of Nat's making, with several stalks that allowed for multiple eggs to be accommodated by each plant. A smile formed on Nat's lips. It always did her heart good to be in nature, and also to see that her handiwork was flourishing. "So, you made that?" Nat jumped at Jack's sudden inquiry but did not turn, nodding instead as she straightened up to cast her emerald eyes over the rest of the plants encircling the clearing. "Why didn't you just make him little assistants like North's Yetis?" Nat snickered and looked at him in bemusement.

"You know him quite well, don't you? It's not hard to figure out. Does Bunnymund seem the type to want to keep up with dozens of little creatures like Yetis or elves?" As she explained it to him, he gave her that lop-sided smile of his. Nathalie's heart jumped in her chest, her eyes focusing on his expression for much too long, and then she hastily looked away. If she was not careful, that smile would be her undoing. She tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear and knelt down once more to inspect the colorful curling plants. "Besides, plant work is my specialty. I have always been more attuned to them than I have animals."

"Oh." Silence fell between them and Bunnymund did not appear. Nathalie was not sure what the Easter mascot's game was, but she was not about to so willingly play. "Hey, Nat, why don't you explore the grove with me?" he suddenly suggested, holding out his hand to her. "It's been a long time since you've seen it, and I've only been here once and didn't really have the chance to poke around. C'mon, whadaya say?" Nat stared through lidded eyes at the pale hand hovering above her. She shouldn't, she really shouldn't, and she knew it, but that annoying heart of hers seemed to have a will of its own. She nodded and straightened up, not intending to take his hand for fear of what may happen, but Jack Frost was a willful boy. It reached out and found her hand nonetheless, and seemed not to feel the tremble in her fingers as it curled around them. That lop-sided smile still bloomed on Jack's face like a rose in the snow. Nathalie could only struggle to keep the breath from being stolen from her chest as he pulled her along down the path and deeper into the grove, because Jack was just so utterly breathtaking that she couldn't stand it.

She managed to hold her composure as they walked side-by-side (and hand-in-hand) down the uneven dirt paths that snaked through the lush pathways the eggs walked. Nat looked back to see little pink carnations blooming in the wake of her footsteps, which mortified her because that only happened when she was acutely embarrassed, and of course being aware of her embarrassment only made it worse. Jack was, well, Jack- completely oblivious or too nice to inquire about such a phenomenon, and she desperately hoped it was the latter. Trying to ignore the tingling of her nerves, traveling from her hand up her arm, she focused on what had become of Bunnymund's garden.

As they traversed the grove, they could see little eggs on the march, most of them already bearing paint from the paint-producing flowers she had designed. It had been quite tricky, designing the plant chemistry to emit a cloud of pigment that would stick, but it had been a project Nat had quite enjoyed. The pastel packages waddled on to their destinations, falling through the spiral pattern plants or tromping beneath unique silver bell-like flowers that showered them in sticky, glittery pollen, jumping into pitcher plants full of dye to emerged two-toned or rolling across broad fern leaves to be patterned by their dye-producing dew buds. The towering trees were Jack's favorite, as they produced berry-like fruits whose juices acted as a glassy, shiny dye and fell quite easily, even with the rustle of wind; the eggs marched right underneath them, of course, and left splashed with the substance and more stylish than before. Jack just liked them because the berries were good to eat, and he came through with the juices splattered all over his face and staining his fingertips. "How do I get this off? Bunny is gonna be mad at me!" he wailed as he unsuccessfully tried to remove the stains with his hoodie, which only left it smeared and also dyed the blue fabric a lovely shade of purple.

"I warned you. It's water-resistant, too, so you're going to have a tough time of it!" she laughed at him, earning a dismal pout in exchange.

The plants were only the beginning, though; to support such an ecosystem, pollinators were key, and the grove was also populated with such creatures of Nat's design. Nat's presence naturally attracted them, enough even to overcome their skittishness of Jack, allowing her to truly show him the magic she had wrought.

The grove had its own resident species of bee, modeled after the stingless honeybee but much larger and more docile. As they passed a hive, hanging from the bough of one of the berry trees, they came humming down from the leaves to bob and weave around the two of them. "Bunny uses their honey to dye eggs, too. It makes them look like stained glass," she commented to a very impressed Jack while the bees bumped against her face and body. "Each colony is different, too. Their honey will be a different color depending on what flower they use the most." Of course, the grove also had a wonderful array of butterflies. Nat had been quite imaginative with those; some were inconspicuous, similar to their non-mythical counterparts, but others bore the true creative prowess of Nat's mind. One had wings like colored glass that sparkled with every flap, another had wings like rose petals, which it used to camouflage, and still another had wings like feathers and fluttered about on the breeze like dandelion seeds in the wind. Nat had made brilliantly plumaged birds and colorfully scaled lizards, bungling beetles and graceful dragonflies, frogs and newts to populate the ponds and little rodents to populate the nooks and crannies. As they came to a large pond, made of clear spring water seeping from the bedrock with koi-like fish with scales like gemstones swimming close to the white sandy bottom, Jack perched himself on a stone and looked at her with absolute wonder.

"You're amazing, Nat." The girl flushed at the compliment, making the water turn red in her reflection, and watched a tadpole wriggle through the water rather than look at him. "Really… I never could have imagined someone that has so much power. You literally designed a whole _world._ " Nat exhaled slightly as she sat on her knees beside the pond's edge, tracing her finger over its calm surface to send ripples bubbling across.

"The power of the Earth is not something to be wielded lightly. That is why Pitch must not be able to get his hands on the Tree of Life, no matter the cost."

"Or _you,"_ Jack pointed out. She stiffened as he came to sit next to her, their shoulders bumping together, but her pride and a small measure of happiness prevented her from moving over. "I mean, you said if he hurts you, the Tree will be hurt too, right?"

"Yes, that is true. The Tree and I are linked through the Earth."

"What does that even mean?" he frowned at her, leaning back into the sand. Nat cocked her head to the side slightly, her eyes searching the still-rippling water's surface for an easy way to explain her role and her relationship with nature.

"The Guardians protect the light of children, yes? They are guided by The Man in the Moon. In the same vein, I am guided by the Earth, and guard the life she brings forth. It is much deeper than that, though. I am linked to the Earth. I feel her pain, her joy and her sorrow, as my own." A complex expression appeared on Jack's face as he struggled to comprehend her explanation.

"The Earth… has… feelings?"

"Yes. She is as much a person as you and I, but she has no physical form. Instead, she runs like blood through the planet." Nat reached forward to pull a water lily across the pond's surface, taking Jack's hand to gently place it over the soft pink leaves of the flower. "Can you feel it? Her spirit pulsing within every aspect of life. Her laughter is the wind rustling through the leaves; her sorrow is the rain upon a summer's morning; her joy is the warmth of the sun and the scent of flowers on the breeze." Jack knitted his eyebrows as his fingers brushed over the petals, but he quickly gasped and retracted his hand as the petals turned withered and black with frost. A look of acute sadness appeared on his face, but Nat simply smiled and waved a hand over the flower, and it bloomed brighter than before. It seemed that Nat was not the only one barred from something.

"Does that mean… I hurt her, doing what I do?"

"In a sense, but don't feel bad about it, Jack. You are doing what you are meant to do. You bring joy to the hearts of children, upon winter's back. Besides, winter comes regardless of your coming. Winter is when the Earth sleeps, to replenish herself for the renewal of life in the spring. It is also man's penance for their greed." Nat did not mention it, but winter was also one of the most painful things she could experience, feeling the life die around her and cry for relief…

"Really?"

"That's right. Before Mother Nature existed, the Earth shared everything with man and it was eternally spring and summer. Crops never failed; game was always plentiful. However, man grew greedy and demanded more of the Earth, and went so far as to try and steal her power as their own." Nat pushed the water lily away and watched it float across the pond until it rejoined the other blooms. "So, she punished them with the winter, to keep them humble and to remind them that life is a gift that should not be taken for granted. The Earth chose a virtuous human to be her first Guardian of the Tree of Life, Mother Nature. Life and death are of the same coin, just like you and I." She smiled in bemusement. "Humans are difficult learners, though. There was once a time when the Tree was available to them, but they tried to steal its power, too. That is why it is now hidden and I must govern life's progression from the shadows… It is also why they can no longer see me."

"Man, you have a lot of responsibility on your shoulders, don't you?" Jack was stretched out beside her now, his head propped in his hand and his blue eyes trained on her. Nat flushed, but looked at him out of the corners of her eyes. "I couldn't imagine having the fate of the world in my hands _every day._ " Nat's mouth twitched upwards into a smile. "And you deal with all that by yourself?" The smile fell from Nat's face, and she looked down at her lap.

"It's… The way I prefer things to be." That was a bold-faced lie, but she could not tell him the truth. It wasn't people, it was _him_ she could not bring herself to get close to.

"Why?" he insisted and sat up. Nathalie's pulse skyrocketed as he pushed a little closer to her. She could feel his hand sliding in the sand behind her back. "I know how painful it is to be alone. I went around without memories for four hundred years. I had nobody. Then I met Jamie, and the rest of the Guardians, and…" He trailed off, then looked at her intently. "I felt _completed._ " He hesitated for a moment, and then suddenly grabbed her hand again. _No. No, this can't happen. I can't-!_ "Nat, you don't have to be alone anymore. I'll-" Before he could say anything else, Nathalie pulled herself away from him and scurried back to the path, leaving sand falling and a distressed Jack in her wake. She hovered at the entrance to the pathway, not looking at him but also not wishing to leave, so she just settled for stiffly standing there.

"I'm sorry, Jack. The burden of the Earth is mine to bear alone. I don't _need_ anyone else." She placed bite in that last sentence, though she felt none. _For four hundred years, I've kept up this wall of mine, and in less than a day he waltzes in and starts tearing it down…_ Nat wanted it destroyed, oh, how she did. She could not allow it, though.

She could not allow it, because Jack would be hurt by it in the end.


	7. Chapter 6: Silver and Gold

" _I don't_ _ **need**_ _anyone else._ "

Her owns words echoed in Nathalie's ears as she jerked awake with a small gasp. It took her a moment to find her bearings, as up until that moment she has been trapped in thralls of a harrowing nightmare, but like the last pearls of snow under the assault of the scorching sun, it was melting away into incoherent watery threads of confusion. Pushing her upper body up with one hand and rubbing her sleep-heavy eyes with another, she inhaled deeply and tasted the fresh tang of a spring morning. _That's right… I spent the night in Bunny's garden,_ she recalled as the fog in her mind rapidly diffused.

Bunnymund, being more creature than human, had no solid dwelling of any sort in his home, and as was necessitated her bed had been the ground. Nathalie was no stranger to sleeping outdoors; in fact, she often did so willingly. Nathalie loved the moon and stars as equally she did the life-giving sun, and as a being of nature, there was no better comfort than the undiluted embrace of the Earth herself. Of course, she wasn't a Neanderthal; a lady required at least some level of comfort. As such, she had conjured herself a mattress of sorts, a pillowy growth of lush wild grasses with the occasional incorporated sprig of chamomile and bloom of lavender to aid in the sleeping process. With a small sigh of contentment, she rustled her fingers through her knotted stands of blonde hair to release the clinging particles of plant matter, enjoying the bursts of aromatic scent that wafted to her nose by the actions. She was just about to think to herself that it was a lovely morning until the serene silence was shattered by a loud, very ugly-sounding _snoooooork!_

 _Oh, right. Jack's here._ She tossed a blank stare across the clearing they had bedded down in for the night. Ever since Nathalie's outburst, their conversation had been… strained. They had reunited with Bunnymund very shortly after and had spent the majority of the day helping him with Easter preparations; Jack had helped herd the tottering, bungling, mindless eggs through their course while Nat had made adjustments to her assortment of specialized plants to maximize speed and efficiency. The communication barrier was more Nat's effort than Jack's; every time he had tried to involve her in some sort of discussion, she had invented some task that Bunnymund had asked her to attend to and run off. It had been excruciatingly painful, seeing the look of disappointment and confusion on his face each time. Nathalie couldn't help it.

Growing close to Jack Frost scared her far more than Pitch Black ever could.

A wry mile tugged at the corners of Nathalie's lips as she watched him from across the quiet clearing. Looking at him now, sprawled out in the mass of crumpled and crushed plant bedding that Nat had grown for him, limbs splayed and tangled and a bit of drool trailing from the corner of his open mouth, it was a wonder anyone would ever find him captivating… But Nat did. Captivating, invigorating, titillating… and unattainable. The gentle expression that had naturally formed on her face just gazing at him was replaced with an agonized pang of despair as her heart clenched in her chest. _I never resented this fate of mine… until you walked into my cavern, Jack,_ she thought pitifully as tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks, ever-rosy with the unmistakable flush of life in its prime. It hadn't been on purpose, for the world to decide they were to be beings at odds. Yet it was cruel nonetheless.

"Nat?"

Nathalie hastily whirled about so that her back was too him and hastily wiped at her face, hoping that puffy eyes would not give away the fact that she had been crying. Jack was not the type to simply drop the matter if asked, and she had no care to admit why she was so melancholy. She took a brief moment to recollect her dignified and regal persona before turning back around to flash him a small smile. She was far more willing to dissipate their previous frostiness than drudge up _that_ conversation.

"Good morning." He gave her a quizzical look, but before any more words could pass between them, Bunnymund came bounding into the clearing.

"Up an' at 'em, you two. Yer off to hang out with Sandy."

* * *

Though Jack and Nathalie had only just awoken to behold the waking world of light, it was no time before they were greeted by the brilliant canvas of the starry night sky half a world away. The shimmering golden sand of the Sandman's floating platform kissed Nathalie's bare legs as she sat primly in the center, not sure whether her eyes were more captivated by his impressive display of sand-molding magical prowess or the blanket of glittering stars above her head. They were currently situated atop a rural village of the African savannah. With no light pollution from all the modern technologies and commodities, the sky could display its beauty without limitation. Nat's eyes, deciding that they would much rather behold its brilliance instead, reflected the millions of bright white stars, making it seem as if true emeralds were deposited in the pale softness of her face. It looked as if someone had taken a paintbrush slathered in white paint and just flung it against a blank canvas to create the kaleidoscopic arrangement of the celestial bodies, with one large glob forming the full moon. Nat only tore her eyes away from the heavens as a flickering of gold demanded her attention.

A little stream of the Sandman's sand had entered her field of view, and her gaze naturally followed it as it skipped through the air. More sand pulled together to form a steady-flowing river that eventually curled in on itself and began taking shape. When it materialized in the form of a blooming rose, Nathalie looked at the Sandman to see him smiling sweetly at her. He gestured wildly at his creation, seeking praise.

"It's lovely, Sandy. You truly are talented," she affirmed with a soft smile. He grinned widely and danced a happy jig, then returned to the task at hand; he sent a troupe of elephants parading down in a single-file line, followed by a lion that bounding through the air with powerful leaps, then a couple of zebras that tossed their golden manes before thundering down to earth. The peaceful specters drifted into the houses to dance in children's' heads and deliver pleasant dreams. Now that Nat actually paid attention, it, too was truly a sight to behold. "All the Guardians truly have such amazing creative gifts," she murmured under her breath. She really hadn't realized she had spoken aloud, and so she jumped when Jack plopped down on his behind next to her, shoving her in the shoulder lightly.

"You're one to talk." Nat flushed and looked away, both from the praise and the proximity.

"You exaggerate. All I do is help life flourish when it is needed. There's hardly any creativity involved in that."

"But what about all those things you made for Bunny?" Nat's mouth twitched in displeasure at the fact that she had been so easily contradicted. She found herself digging her fingers into the golden sand, swirling it around her fingers and focusing on the strangely water-like quality it had rather than channeling her nervous energy into reacting to him. "Nat, seriously. You shouldn't sell yourself so short. I never would've dreamed of doing the things you do." Nathalie had never thought herself necessarily weak, but she had always regarded herself marginally inferior to the other spirits simply on the account that she wasn't a Guardian; honestly, to hear Jack sing her praises so insistently made her feel quite special. Nathalie knew deep in her heart that she shouldn't allow his words to sway her so easily, but despite herself, she felt a warm, fuzzy feeling bubble up inside of her and a smile naturally found its way to her lips.

"Heh… I guess you're right…" she chuckled lightly, and, despite the warning whisper in the back of her mind, turned to look at him. That was a mistake, because she was instantly electrified. His winter-blue eyes sparkled with a gentle warmth as they gazed into Nat's own earthy green ones, and his smile was genuinely happy, spread across his face with just a hint of his white teeth peeking out from beneath his lips. Nat drew in a breath as the silence hung between them. Out of the corners of her eyes, she could see his hand drawing near, but her body wouldn't respond the way she wanted it to. She could do nothing as his took a strand of her blonde hair to tuck it behind her ear. His fingers brushed back to trail ever-so-lightly across the skin of her cheek. Jack's hand was so cold, like the first harsh frost of winter, but also excruciatingly hot, leaving a blushing trail in its wake. Suddenly, without warning, it dove down to grasp her own, and Nat shivered as the icy, fiery sensation overtook the sensory receptors of her fingers and palms.

"I have an idea!" He all but jerked Nat to her feet; in the spongey, ever-shifting expanse of golden sand, it was hard to keep one's balance when yanked so suddenly, and so Nat wobbled about a bit before she could get her bearings.

"What's this all of a sudden?!" she stammered as he guided her to the true center of the platform. Sandy was looking over his shoulder quizzically at the actions of the two four-hundred-year-old teenagers.

"Dance with me!" Jack grinned like it was a perfectly reasonable demand. Nat would've never guessed that's what he was up to, and despite all her attempts at propriety and poise up until that point, she was so dumbfounded she couldn't help but stare at him slack-jawed. "I know you can! Before I overheard Pitch talking about his evil plan or whatever, I saw you dancing in the woods once, making the flowers bloom and the trees green." Nat closed her mouth as she bit down so hard on her bottom lip so hard she thought she might draw blood. A thousand questions were streaming through her mind, collecting in a confusing, deafening cacophony that prevented her from even discerning what those questions were. The only thing she was really sure of was the fact that Jack was still holding her hand. She shouldn't. She really shouldn't…

But she did.

"Okay," she murmured in reply. Hesitantly, she stepped forward to place a slightly trembling hand on Jack's shoulder. Head down but looking up at his face unsurely through her lashes, she watched his expression as he settled his free hand right on her waist. One wouldn't think he was perturbed at all, from the confident smile painting his face, but he couldn't fool Nat; for the briefest of seconds, she saw a little anxiety flash in the clear pools of his eyes. It reassured her a little bit for some reason.

With no song other that the crickets ringing their tune in the long grasses far below, Nathalie and Jack began to dance. Jack was surprisingly good at the maneuver, guiding her around in a continuous set of circles with his posture straight and his feet sure. "How did you learn to dance like this?" she asked with a slight laugh, not sure why she found it so amusing.

"You pick up a few things after four hundred years," he shrugged simply. Crystal met emerald as their gazes held each other's, unwavering. Nathalie found herself savoring the act though the sorrow and pain pulsed in the back of her mind. Already, her predecessor's warning was beginning to bear fruit; from Jack's hands, she could feel icy cold spreading like a virus, eating into her vulnerable skin with fervor. She could tell that Jack was feeling out of sorts as well, from the light flush coming to his face and the confusion blooming in his eyes. He was likely chalking it off to nerves, or something, but Nathalie knew what was happening.

They were simply not meant to be this close to each other. Winter and spring could never meet… such was the laws of nature, written in stone. Nathalie was just about to pull back when flashes of gold pranced in her vision, and she automatically turned her head to investigate. Spiraling around the two of them were a dozen more dancing couples made of Sandy's characteristic sand, men in tuxes leading beautiful women in tiered ballgowns in an endless, sensual waltz around the platform. Their creator snickered and grinned proudly as Nat looked at him incredulously. Trapped now due to societal norms, Nathalie relinquished herself to the situation, though her hand and waist were beginning to go numb.

"You know, Nat…" The embedded call of those words teased Nat's face back to meet his. His head was tilted to the side slightly as he stared deeply at her, so deep Nathalie felt like his stare was dragging out her quivering soul to investigate it wholly and completely, and she couldn't hide anything. Caught under that gaze like a deer in headlights, she could only gaze back anxiously, waiting for what he was going to say. She was very aware of the fact that his face drew closer, as if it would make apparent what he was searching for with those clear eyes like Arctic ice. "I know we've never met, but I swear, it feels like we've known each other forever." Panic gripped Nat harder than his icy touch was. Every cell in her body exploded at once with adrenaline, and she couldn't hide the sharp whistle of her breath hitching in her throat. He looked at her in bewilderment as her eyes traveled all over his face in erratic movements, unable to settle on any one spot as her brain effectively short-circuited.

 _Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no! This is too much; I can't tell him. I can't!_ As if drawn by a powerful magnet her gaze dragged back to his own. She beheld those crystalline eyes that she found so chilling yet so beautiful. Was it her imagination, or was she so cold that her breath was beginning to fog in front of her face? Her vision was swimming. She realized with both relief and horror that it was just because tears had flooded her eyes and blurred it.

"I want to go down!" she cried suddenly and firmly, tearing apart their locked visions as she briskly jerked away from him. Sandy blinked at her in confusion as she strode to the edge of the sandy platform, but obediently fashioned her a set of stairs so she could descend to the savannah. A heat rushed to her cheeks as she heard Jack say something to the Sandman and rush after her; she could hear the soft padding of his feet taking the steps two at a time to catch up with her. She looked down at her hand to see a thin layer of frost had formed upon it, but was rapidly melting into cold water as Nat's own warming powers working their magic on it. She did not turn around, knowing that it would spell their demise together if she did, and instead just marched down to the earth like a robot desperately rebelling against its hard-wired programming. Really, everything in Nat was screaming to turn around, but she couldn't.

 _It'll be the end of both of us._


	8. Chapter 7: Cold

"Nat! Hey, Nat, come on! What's this all about?" Nathalie ignored Jack shouting after her as she descended the soft, sandy golden steps that the Sandman had fashioned for her. Her hand burned as the last dregs of the frosting ice were melted away, and she could feel the stream of water traveling down her palm to fall in droplets from her index finger, absorbing into the sand below. Jack was all but running down the steps and caught up to her at the base where the shifting sand touched the grassy savannah; he made no attempt to grab her or force her to stay there and talk to him, only just hovered right behind her with a soft, pained, "Nat?" Something about that made Nathalie linger there rather than charging off into the savannah like she had intended.

"Jack…" she whispered as she ran her hand up her arm in a compulsive, nervous gesture. She could not still bring herself to look at him; her gaze remained trained on the brown grasses swallowing up her feet, though they burned to do otherwise. She really ought to tell him the truth. He deserved to know everything, rather than suffer through Nat's errant behavior with no clue as to why she was pushing him away. Yet, she could not bring herself to. She knew what was happening; she was fooling herself into thinking that _somehow_ things would work out all right and they could be together. Nathalie knew that wasn't true, as the wet spot on her waist where Jack's touch had all but frozen her very well proved, yet she just couldn't find it within herself to disobey that selfish part of her. His name hung in the night air like an unanswered question, joining the cacophony of the ringing crickets. The tears started flowing freely from her eyes once more. Though she was facing away from him, he could just barely discern the glitter of the watery trail against her cheek, because she felt his fingers brush over her skin to catch them. They froze to her face on contact.

If Jack noticed, she never knew, because suddenly they had more pressing matters to attend to. The abrupt silence struck Nathalie like an arrow to her chest; all the crickets had fallen silent, holding their breath as something foul prowled among them. "Jack, something's here," she whispered and grabbed her bow from her back, expert fingers nocking a feathered arrow into place without even looking. Nathalie knew it was nothing of the Earth's making; she could sense all life forms in the vicinity at any given time. She could _sense_ this thing, but not completely; it was a mocking of life, a cheap imitation wrought from evil intentions and darkness. Her emerald eyes scanned the long grasses surrounding the African village that could perfectly conceal any predator.

"Do you see it?" Jack whispered in her ear. Despite everything, Nat still shuddered slightly at the puff of his cold breath against her skin that made goosebumps rise for a couple of reasons. Momentarily distracted, Nathalie missed the pale yellow glow of monstrous eyes that gleamed at her in the moonlight. In the following second, the beast was upon her. "Look out!" Jack shouted and grabbed Nathalie around her waist to fling her to the side as a large, dark form pounced at her from the savannah grasses. She landed roughly against the cold earth, while Jack scrambled to his feet and sent a blast of Arctic air at the beast. It pranced away, snarling, and Nathalie rolled onto her belly to get a good look at what was attacking them. "It's one of Pitch's nightmares!"

Nightmare it was indeed. It took the form of a grotesquely large lion and was made of dark purple sand that was very obviously a stolen abhorrence of the Sandman's golden particles. Its mane was not shaggy like its natural counterpart's, but jagged and crystalline, ending in sharp points whose edges caught the moonlight like thousands of tiny blades. Its teeth and claws were saber-sharp; its massive paws dug into the loamy soil as it lashed its long, tufted tail and snarled savagely at Jack. Nat hopped to her feet and before the creature could deign to pounce at her again, she tossed back the white sleeves of her dress to reveal powerfully toned arm muscles that left Jack gawking. Not even noticing his impressed stare, she pulled the bowstring back until she was shaking with the effort, drawing her arm back all the way over her shoulder in a quick, fluid movement, before releasing the projectile. It screamed through the night air to punch right through the area where the lion's heart would beat, and with a shrill scream the vile thing collapsed into harmless dust. Where the arrow buried itself fletching-deep into the earth, curling ferns and flowers bloomed to life.

"That was so awesome!" Jack beamed in total admiration, jumping a circle around her while poking at her biceps. "You're so cool, Nat! You just took that lion out like it was _nothing_!" Nathalie flushed and tossed her blonde hair over her shoulder in a vain display to flex her arms again, admittedly enjoying the way the frost spirit was fangirling over her. She didn't have time to say anything, however, before the wild grasses began shaking erratically before them.

"Something tells me that the lion has friends," Nat groaned. _Friends_ was a gross understatement. Nat gasped in shock as literally dozens of dark mockeries of African wildlife materialized in the brush, only faintly discernable by their hulking outlines against the backdrop of the Milky Way sky- elephants with curved tusks, antelopes with curling horns, hyenas with gaping maws, all ready to tear into the two teenage spirits with relish. "They're gonna stampede us!" she shrieked in horrified realization, and not two seconds later did the wall of shadowy animals charge them. The earth rumbled with hundreds of hooves and paws churning up the loamy earth and rending the wild grasses to shreds as they bore down upon them like a dark tsunami.

"Hang on!" Jack shouted over the torrential noise and scooped Nathalie up into his arms. He summoned a powerful wind that sent them blasting up into the air high above the Sandman's platform, where he was standing in the middle with a quivering question mark above his golden head. "Sandy! It's Pitch!" Jack shouted and pointed with his staff at the writhing mass of stampeding ghostly animals that was spiraling into the air in pursuit. Sandy procured his golden whip and began lashing at them angrily, while a small golden hawk materialized from his sand behind him and took off into the sky, likely to summon the other Guardians. Until they arrived, however, they were on their own.

Trying her best to ignore the burning pain blanching her skin in every spot her body met Jack's, Nathalie shifted in his arms so that their chests were pressed together and she could fire arrows over his back. Dark dust began to rain from the stampeding mass as arrow after arrow marked its target, but there were simply too many of the monstrous mockeries for Nathalie to make much of a difference. After a few minutes of Jack dodging and weaving in the air while Nat bombarded them, she reached back over her shoulder to find with horror that her quiver was empty. Not that she would be effective at that point, anyway; a thin layer of frost was gleaming across her bare skin and her gown was beginning to stiffen as the fabric froze, making her movements harsh and labored. Jack was not faring well either; his pale white skin had taken on a faint pink hue and he was panting as sweat trailed down the side of his face.

"Jack! We have to do something," Nathalie groaned as she collapsed against him, shuddering and too weak to move.

"I can't hold them off like this… It's too hot here," Jack answered, completely misreading what was ailing him at the moment. "Hold on!" he grimaced and grabbed a tighter hold on her, but the swirling wind that rocketed them away muffled her scream of agony. Jack twirled his staff in his hand to send massive ice crystals through the storm of shadowy animals as they attempted to block his path, punching a large hole in them that he dove through. The wind whirled in Nat's ears creating deafening white noise and she felt as if her throat was freezing over too, preventing her from speaking or even breathing. She buried her face into the soft fabric of Jack's blue hoodie in the feeble hope that she could pry some warmth from it, but to no avail. She was just cold, freezing, turning to ice from the outside in…

* * *

Nathalie was near unconsciousness by the time they landed. While the Northern hemisphere was in spring, the southern part of the globe was spending its day in cold winters. Nathalie was not sure what part of the world she had been spirited away too; all she knew was that she had been borne to a dark pine forest where the ground was frozen and overlain with snow. Jack was spent from the mad dash bearing the life-giving woman in his arms, and so their descent was less than graceful; as he attempted to land on the ground, he stumbled and Nat went flying from his arms to blast into a snowbank, while Jack just flopped face-first into the snow. "Ugh… Well, I think we managed to outrun them for a little while… Hopefully Sandy will be okay," she heard him groan as he sat up and shook snowflakes from his white hair. Nathalie had not the strength to reply, only managing a pained whimper. Hearing her distress, Jack gasped and rushed over to her, pulling her from the snowbank and instantly recoiling from what he saw. "N-Nat… What's wrong?"

Carrying her toward winter was the absolute worst thing to do. Nathalie was always weakest in the winter realms, and here, where the world was at the peak of the cold, lifeless season, she was as fragile and frail as a glass sculpture. Her entire body vibrated in a pathetic attempt to stave off the chill that had taken ahold of her body, like a wolf rending her to pieces with sharp jaws. Jack could finally see the thin layer of ice coating her body and the blue tint to her normally rosy skin, she could tell, from the way his icy eyes were sweeping over her body as if he couldn't register which part of her was the worst. "What's happening?" he choked out, about to cry from seeing her in such a state. His condition had completely vanished; there was no trace of the fever that had gripped him before.

"You mean you haven't realized it yet?" In her hazy vision, Nathalie saw Jack whirl around, staff held aloft as Pitch Black himself materialized from the darkness. He stood tall and gaunt across the clearing with his hands clasped behind his back as Jack threateningly brandished his staff at him. "What did you think would happen, bringing her to such a lifeless place?" Pitch sighed as he gestured lazily around them. "Here, in the dark of winter, young Mother Nature cannot hear the Earth sing," he grinned maliciously at Nat. She felt a cold barb of horror thorn in her heart.

"How… How do you know about the Earthsong?" she whispered. It appeared that she had drastically underestimated him. He knew far more than he ought to. He just smiled wanly at her from across the small clearing.

"Did you really expect me to exact my plans without conducting the proper research? I am not an impatient man. I have millennia to reap my vengeance on the Guardians… I am willing to take the necessary time to know everything I need to know." As he purred like some dark leopard, he took a few steps through the snow towards the two of them. Jack slid back a few paces, planting himself between Pitch and Nat with a protective scowl.

"I don't get it! What's the Earthsong, Nat?" Nathalie was too busy lamenting in the freezing snow. She was rapidly deteriorating in the wintery onslaught around her. Desperately, she pawed through the fluffy white powder to push her palm against the hard-packed, frozen earth, but Pitch was right. The Earth was silent here, slumbering as she punished the human world for her sins against her. Here, Nat was utterly powerless.

"Remember how I told you that the Earth speaks?" she coughed. Her arms wobbled as she attempted to pull herself into a sitting position, feeling like the snow itself was draining her of her energy, but she didn't even have the strength for that. She flopped back down with a pained cry. Jack, watching Pitch carefully, edged back to her before crouching down and helping her sit up. Her entire body was numb, but she could still feel where his hand wrapped around her arm; it seemed like it bit into her, digging deep into her flesh with eager teeth. He looked at her in fear as she whimpered loudly and cried out again. "Ungh! The Earth… Does not speak like you and I… It is a song in a language long forgotten to men. At the onset of spring and throughout summer, that is when she sings… I channel her song to bring life back into the world. The Earth is the source of my powers, Jack," she explained weakly. She was breathing hard and she swept a shaky hand across her face to pull back her hair, finding the strands stiff with frost.

"However, if she _cannot_ hear the Earthsong…" Pitch grinned evilly, "then Mother Nature _has_ no power. She is as feeble and weak as an ordinary human… and then some. This cold, dead climate here is slowly killing her… and it's making you stronger than ever. Painfully ironic, isn't it?" As the grin ate its way across his pale, garish face, Nathalie knew what he was going to say next. The way his dark eyes glittered knowingly at her told her everything. She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but the cold really had invaded her through and through this time; all she could feel from head to toe was its icy grip, eating its way slowly but painfully to her heart. She could even cry, because ice crystals clumped her lashes and the tears froze against her eyes. _I'm dying…_ she thought weakly as she fell forward. Jack caught her in his arms, panicked, and their eyes met for a moment, clear ice and freezing emeralds. He then growled and whipped around to glare at Pitch.

"You monster… You knew-"

"Of course. You're terribly predictable, especially with sweet Mother Nature there keeping you in suspense." As Jack looked down at her incredulously, she managed to find enough strength to turn her face away, agonized guilt written all over her ice-encrusted face. "Enough talk. I've come to kill the girl and bring eternal winter, not spell everything out for you," Pitch growled. Nat could see his black dust form an long sword out of the corners of her eyes. Its sharp point gleamed in the moonlight, eager to punch through her heart.

"Don't worry, Nat, I'll protect you!" Jack assured her as he held her to his chest. Nat sobbed again, wanting to scream that he was the one who was killing her, not Pitch. All that came out was another strangled whimper. _I'm so cold… I'm so cold…_ she thought as black began pulsing at the edges of her vision. _Please… I don't want to disappear yet… Please…_

 _I want… I want to tell him… everything…_

The was the last thought she had before it all turned dark.


	9. Chapter 8: Dive into Memory

"Nat! No!" Jack exclaimed in horror as the girl went limp in his arms. Her head lolled back to turn her deathly pale face up to the glittering night sky, and the moonlight reflected in the growing ice crystals in her blonde eyelashes and hair. Terrified that she had literally died in his arms, he plopped her down in the snow and pressed his ear against her chest. He breathed a deep sigh of relief as he felt her heart thumping inside, albeit very slowly and quietly, rapidly dwindling by the minute. _Well, I'll just have to finish this up quickly then, won't I?!_ he thought with a growl and jumped up with his staff in hand just as Pitch Black came bearing down on him with a sword of writhing black dust. They collided fiercely right above Nat, and Pitch's ugly pale mug scowled at him from the crossed point of the weapons. He sprung away from Jack and dissolved into shadow, traveling like a murky snake through the gloom of the forest at nighttime, before reappearing over Jack's shoulder with intent to kill. Jack was as fast as he had ever been and countered him immediately, sending him skulking away once more.

As he defended Nat valiantly from Pitch's onslaught, he was painfully aware that every moment further her life was ebbing away, being stolen breath by breath by the environment around them. Jack still wasn't really sure about what was happening, about the Earthsong and this and that, but he could understand that much. As Pitch leaped away from him again, he looked down at her out of the corners of his eyes. He wouldn't have thought it possible but she had grown paler- paler than even him, winter incarnate. _I gotta do something, quick!_ He thought, gritting his teeth as Pitch materialized out of the darkness once more. Jack knew that Pitch was only dragging this out so Nat would perish right then and there, but alone with he her only defender, he just simply didn't have the capability to do much else than fend him off at the moment.

Thankfully, his back-up didn't waste any time arriving.

Pitch dissolved into darkness as North's thundering sleigh nearly decapitated him as it dove down from the sky, carrying the burly man's battle cry with it. It crashed into a snow bank a few yards away, sliding through the powder to thump against a sturdy tree trunk, and North pouted at the impact.

"Man, now I have to get new paint job," he mumbled before leaping from the driver's seat and brandishing his pair of sleek twin blades. Bunnymund hopped out after him with boomerang in hand followed by Sandy, who was holding up both his fists at the reformed Pitch Black opposite the clearing with a challenging scowl on his golden face. Toothiana left the squaring up to the other Guardians as she flew over to Jack with several of her little iridescent fairies fluttering nervously around her.

"Oh, my goodness!" she gasped in alarm as she landed on her knees beside the literally freezing girl. "Jack, what happened to her?"

"I don't know, something about the cold hurting her," he answered in a high-pitched, panicky voice while his hands dove into his messy white hair. "Tooth, you gotta get her far, far away from here." He was shocked because the word _me_ almost came out of his mouth; thinking of Pitch's words before Nat had lapsed into unconsciousness, he began to feel a hard ball of dread forming in the pit of his stomach. He was winter incarnate, and she was the life-giving spring… He thought back to everything up until that point, how Nat had been so insistent on holding him at arm's length… And a miserable puzzle piece clicked into place in his mind.

Maybe winter wasn't the only thing that stole her life away… Maybe, little by little, he was killing her, too.

* * *

Pitch got away, naturally. Once he had to contend with all of the Guardians, he realized that his efforts would cease to be successful and so he slunk back into whatever dark, dank hole he had been hiding in to wait for another opportune moment. The Guardians went after him, of course, save for Toothiana and Jack, who spirited the barely-clinging-to-life Nat to the Tooth Palace where the climate was mild enough for her to recover. Guilty brooding on the possibility that he had contributed to Nat's condition, he crept off to the small pool next to the mosaic of Toothiana's prowess far from Nat was recovering within the spires of the fairy's golden palace. With a sigh, he skipped a broken-off chunk of the elaborate marble arrangement across the pool of water, watching as it created several rippling circles across its surface before thunking into the water on the fourth jump. He heaved a heavy sigh and plopped down cross-legged right where he stood to start tearing at the sparse sprigs of grass anxiously instead. At the buzzing of furiously flapping wings and a chirp of greeting.

"Hey, Baby Tooth," he said forlornly as the hummingbird-like fairy charged down from the sky to meet him. He couldn't help but crack a smile as the tiny thing plopped onto his shoulder to affectionately nuzzle his neck; he raised a finger to stroke her lovely turquoise feathers. He knew she had flown all the way down there to cheer him up because he was sad. With a delighted trill, she settled on his shoulder and then looked up at him inquiringly. "I just don't know, Baby Tooth," he responded to her unasked but implied question. He looked back at the small formation of water which was still unsettled by his rock-skipping.

"I'm beginning to think that there's so much more to Nat and me than I ever thought." He looked down at his staff, which was laid right at his feet. The tool he used to thrust the world into the chill of winter… which subsequently made Nat suffer. "I think she's strong and beautiful and I want to get to know her, but… she just won't open up to me, Baby Tooth," he frowned as he leaned his fist into his cheek. He was beginning to riddle out why, too. "I think she just doesn't want to hurt me by telling me that we're literally destroying each other." Nat had called it "two sides of the same coin," and he was beginning to understand that metaphor. They literally couldn't face each other without destroying the delicate balance that had existed between them. Jack had chalked up the strange fever that had gripped him when he touched her to his nerves (because who wouldn't get nervous when dancing with a beautiful girl like her) but considering what had happened to her, it made sense that he was affected in the opposite sense. His shoulders sagged as he sighed again; thinking about the whole debacle was making his brain hurt. "I just don't know what to _do_ , Baby Tooth."

She cooed in understanding and rubbed her feathery cheek against his in a consoling manner. She then chittered excitedly and jumped off his shoulder to fly up into his face, buzzing around and gesturing with her pointy little nose to a certain vault where memories were contained. Jack's eyebrows crept up to the roots of his hair. He was very familiar with the process. Nat was human once, just like himself and the rest of the Guardians, so it stood to reason that her memories would be contained within the Tooth Fairy's vault… However, it was not his own memories that he was looking at, but someone else's entirely. Nat would definitely get angry with him for invading something so private. _How else am I gonna find out the truth, though?_ He thought as he hopped up to stroll over to the vault. Baby Tooth flew up to point out where the little box was contained, and he slid it out. A cute little rendition of blonde-haired Nat was painted on the side. Nat wouldn't tell him anything, so he was just going to have to dive in and learn it himself.

He slid open the tube and was immediately enveloped in white light. He buried his face into the crook of his elbow to keep from being utterly blinded, and he could vaguely feel Baby Tooth diving into his hoodie pocket to be spirited away with him into the world of Nat's memories. When the light faded and he dropped his arm, Jack found himself in a painfully familiar place.

"This is… my home village?" he murmured aloud in wonder. It was unmistakably so; he had been greeted with the small collection of ramshackle huts in the depths of a pine forest when he had traversed his own memoryscape to find the truth about himself all that time ago. Unlike his dream, though, the village was currently in the midst of a brilliant spring; the air was pleasantly warm and instead of thick white snow, the ground was blanketed in lush green grass with the occasional patch of aromatic wildflowers. Flowers also bloomed in little boxes on windowsills or lining the huts to give splashes of color here and there, and little vegetable plots were beginning to bear fruit evidenced by the organized rows of dark green sprouts of varying nature. "Nat lived in my village?" He had thought he would find answers, but so far, he only had more questions. He jumped as a shape ran through him, laughing, and he naturally whirled around to see who had done so only to be met with himself- brown-haired, lanky, and grinning like an idiot. That certainly answered the most pertinent inquiry.

The new question was, where was Nat?

The village wasn't terribly large so after a bit of wandering, Jack found her. It was definitely her; he would recognize that mesmerizing cascade of shining blonde hair anywhere. He found her abode on the outskirts of the village down a little cobblestone path nestled in a small plot amongst the trees, which he thought a bit odd; it was a quaint little house much alike the cabin wrapping around the trunk of the grand Tree of Life, but very much Nat. It was adorned with several flower pots bursting with flowers of all colors and kinds, and along each side of the pathway were rows of garden plots where strong-smelling herbs were growing in plenty. She was knelt down in front of one of them, knees and hands smeared with soil and dirt as she meticulously plucked the largest leaves from the patch of herbs to drop them into a small handbasket at her side. She was also wearing a white dress, but not as gorgeous and regal as the one she wore in the present; it was ratty and torn and could barely be called white at all, as it was permanently stained a creamy shade of beige from much toil and little money. Despite her obvious poverty she still looked effortlessly stunning in Jack's eyes. Jack knew that the phantasm of her would not respond to him, so he settled for watching her go about her business instead, making her way around the herb patches harvesting those she deemed ready. Absently, he wondered what they even were; from how pungent they smelled they had to be spices or medicinal herbs of some kind. Not that he really knew the difference.

Nat suddenly stood up and swept the back of her hand across her sweat-slicked forehead, leaving a trail of dirt particles in a line across her skin. Jack chuckled at the cute action. Suddenly, her green eyes flickered right to him, staring so hard that he swore that she _could_ see him. That wasn't the case, though, which he fully realized when a large rock blasted through his ghostly body to sail across the garden and strike Nat right in the head. With a pained cry she sank to her knees, holding her hands to the scrape that was gushing bright red blood between her fingers. Jack whirled around, instinctively yelling at the culprits, and found a trio of relatively young children standing on the path to Nat's home with armfuls of rocks.

"Witch! Stone the witch!" one of them shouted angrily and picked up another rock to punt at her. Jack went to catch it as he threw it but to his dismay, his hand exploded into atoms before reforming without slowing it at all. The children began relentlessly chucking the stones at the sobbing Nat, who was scrambling to her feet to run back to her house with many bruises and bleeding cuts.

"I'm not a witch! I'm an _herbalist_!" she screamed at them as she reached her door, whirling around to shoot them a desperate, devastated look. Jack's heart clenched at the god-awful expression she was wearing; everything about it was just gut-wrenching, from the blood painting her milk-white skin to her disarrayed flyaways of blonde hair to the tears streaming through the thin layer of grime to the downright pathetic look of dismay. She screamed as they threw another set of rocks at her and hurriedly ducked into her house so that they collided harmlessly with the wood. Knowing he could do nothing about the terrors that were the three children outside, he phased through the wall to stand beside her, as she sat curled up against the door with her head buried into her arms sobbing. She had dropped the basket and the herbs were scattered all around her. He squatted down, and though she couldn't feel it, he brushed her fingers over her barely exposed cheek in the desperate wish that he could wipe her tears away. "Why… Why does no one _understand_ me?" she lamented.

As Baby Tooth wormed her way out of his hoodie to look up at him uncertainly, he frowned, continuing to watch Nat sob miserably.

"I don't know, Baby Tooth, but I _definitely_ don't like where this is going."


	10. Chapter 9: Always

With a miserable sniffle, Nat leaned over to begin picking the herb leaves from the floor, only letting out an occasional hiccup or poorly stifled sob. Jack watched in pure agony as the tears continued to roll down her cheeks and drop down to the floor below, like puddles of paint melting from a wall. How could someone as smart and talented as Nat be so isolated from everyone?

The incorporeal Jack and the crying Nat both jumped nearly a foot in the air as there came loud, insistent knocking at her door. _Those boys couldn't have come to mess with her some more, right? Or worse, could it be someone from the village to harass her?_ He thought and poked his ghostly head through the wall to investigate. To his shock, it was actually his human self, smiling and apparently unaware of the abuse Nat had just suffered. Jack couldn't remember much about his past life but surely he too was not in the business of beating up on the girl, right? Thankfully his question was answered almost instantly, because Nat didn't hesitate in opening the door.

"Hello, Jack." The melancholy in her voice was painfully obvious. He watched as his brown-haired self gasped in horror before his hand flew up to push her tousled blonde strands away from the gaping wound.

"Oh, no! Did those boys come throw rocks at you again?" So it was a daily occurrence. Rage burned up Jack's insides like a bubbling volcano. His human form scowled and whirled on a heel while rolling up to sleeves of his simple brown shirt. "Those punks! I'm gonna go teach 'em a lesson!" Nat's slender arm wound around his, pulling him back as he tried to set off to do just that.

"No! Please! They'll only get angry and come back!" she insisted. Her voice was high-pitched with pure fright and the tears had begun to spill over her emerald eyes again. She dropped her head miserably, bottom lip wobbling. It was such a strange thing, to see the strong and capable girl a meek, timid crying mess before him. "Please… I'll be okay… Just keep coming to see me, Jack," she said softly and looked up. Even though it was only indirectly for him, Jack felt his heart twist into pretzel knots. God, she was beautiful, even the way she was- disheveled and bleeding and dejected. That smile of hers carried more warmth and affection than anything Jack had seen in his life, and he would've been an idiot to deny it.

Nat was in love with him- and in that instant, as the memory of feelings past were revived inside of him, Jack knew that he was in love with her too.

"Always, Nat," his human self laughed good-naturedly, and Nat smiled broader as she pulled him inside. As the door swung closed in his face, Jack twisted his fingers into the blue fabric of his hoodie, right over the spot where his heart was twisting, too.

" _Always_."

The landscape blurred around him before reforming. It was now summer, based on the smothering heat and the abundance of near-ripe crops dominating the various vegetable plots alongside the quaint cottages. Something was off, however; the streets were not stuffed with citizens enjoying the blissful atmosphere of a summer's day; they huddled close to their homesteads or peeked out from windows. As Jack looked around, he noted several buildings that had every window and door boarded tightly shut. The children were not playing or chasing the butterflies that fluttered along tasting the last of the flower's nectar, but were clutched close to their mother's sides or staring with frightful eyes through small gaps in curtains. The world was alive but the village was the epitome of a graveyard. "What is going on?" he wondered aloud. He gasped as half of his misty body was blasted through by a horse's thundering form, hauling a large wagon with a man in a thick black coat and a silver bird beak mask. _A plague doctor?!_ Jack thought and dashed after the wagon, which was shuddering down the uneven road at alarming speed. The doctor snapped the reigns to bid the horse halt in front of the large building at the end of the road, and as Jack approached, he raised his arm to cover his nose for he was greeted by the overwhelming stench of death and misery.

"Doctor, please!" begged a man standing on the steps, seemingly an authority figure given by his slightly more dignified clothing. "Nearly the entire village has been infected. We have resorted to cremating the bodies because we simply can't dig graves fast enough! Please tell me you have news from afar!" He sank to his knees on the wooden steps, and Jack could see his glittering tears even from the small distance. "My wife… She does not have much longer."

"I am afraid that the surrounding settlements are no better," the doctor's voice echoed from within the mask. "There is no cure. Quarantine is your only hope." With a strangled sob, the man curled up and pounded his fists against the wood. His memory began to tug at him, prying free of the bars that had locked it for nearly four hundred years. He recalled it now… A vicious respiratory plague had swept through the village late one summer. He had caught it, and his sister too. It had been so painful, hacking until his chest muscles burned like fire, shivering as a high fever had gripped his body with icy claws, unable to move or eat or drink or even think for the delirium… but it wasn't the doctor who had saved them.

"Doctor! Mayor! Please!" Jack whirled about as she came bounding down the street, bare feet cracked from harsh contact with the sandy stone ground. A basket full to the brim with herbs swung on her arm. She had various bandages covering parts of her body, and far more scrapes and bruises than the last time he had seen her human form. Right, he remembered; since the spring of that year, the abuse had escalated dramatically, to the point that if Nat ever entered town she had to sneak around in a cloak. Jack had resorted to bringing her various things and standing sentry at the entrance to her little enclosed bubble of a home, because the neighborhood children tortured her viciously. "I can save them!"

"You witch! You aren't coming anywhere near this sick house! I'll have you burned!" the man snarled viciously, making Nat halt in her tracks with an alarmed recoil. Tears brimmed in her bright green eyes, wide with fear and hope.

"Please! These herbs produce a special compound that-"

"Enough of your witchcraft!"

"Doctor!" Nat cried insistently and looked at the medical professional. His cold glasses glittered lifelessly above the intimidating mask.

"Leave, girl, lest you catch the plague as well. Herbs can only prevent illness; they cannot save those who are already ill. They will live or die by God's will alone." Nat's shoulders hunched up to her ears as rage contorted her expression into a monstrosity that Jack never wanted to look upon again. It was almost demon-like, with the cold fire that flashed like an emerald's gleaming gemstone and the ruby-red hue to her flushing face.

"You place your hopes in God and ignore the power in your own hands!" she screamed and thrust out the basket of herbs so forcefully that a few of the leaves jumped out and fluttered to the ground. "Sometimes we have to save _ourselves_! Mayor, your wife is inside! Doctor, your daughter is inside! My best friend is inside! Please! _I can save them_!"

"Quiet, girl, with your blasphemy! It was your vile existence that has wrought God's wrath upon us!" the mayor screamed at her. Jack's fists curled into tight balls; how could these people be so impossibly backward? Nat was nothing like that. She was sweet, and kind, and had only ever wanted to help people. Nat's face scrunched up in further agony, and then hung her head in defeat. He could see her entire body shaking with anger and dismay, and the tears rolling down her dirty cheeks to drop down to the dry, dusty ground below.

"Why… Why don't you _understand_?"

The landscape blurred like paint smearing across an easel as she whirled to run back to her cabin. The next scene was a drastic change; night had fallen over the forest. Compared to the daytime, it was very much alive with life, though not human. The crickets were singing in a deafening symphony in the long grasses, accompanied by the occasional resonating hoot of an owl. The wind shook the branches lightly to fill the air with a consistent fluttering of leaves. Jack even spied the horned form of a stag grazing beside one of the boarded-up cabins. Suddenly, it reared its massive head to peer with glittering eyes down the pathway, before its powerful legs sent it in a springing leap back into the depths of the wood. Jack turned to find Nat creeping through the shadows, her little herb basket clutched tightly to her side. The sick house had no guard. He wondered if everyone in the village had fallen ill, aside from Nat.

The wooden steps of the sick house creaked loudly as Nat hopped up them, and she paused for a moment, wildly looking around to see if anyone had been alerted. After a minute or so of continuous quiet aside from the song the earth's denizens were singing, she ascended the rest of the steps and entered the building. Jack followed her inside, phasing through the wood, and instantly recoiled in revile. The stench of illness and death was ten times more pungent inside, and the sounds of nature did not penetrate there. No, the only symphony to be had was a dismal one of coughs and groans and pleas to Heaven.

Nat made her rounds through the patients quickly and efficiently. She kneeled beside the fever-gripped men, women, and children, mixing together what he recognized as a fever reducer and a cocktail of herbs she had said would accelerate healing and drive away illness. That's what Jack used to visit her for; he would inquire all about the various herbs she grew and what they did. He had only ever understood it on surface level, but he just loved the way her eyes would sparkle and alight as she told him everything she knew. Nat would always jump up with her hands clasped and announce that her herbs were the key to medicine; she said that illness wasn't God's wrath or miasma, but a natural phenomenon caused by something that man knew nothing of yet. "One day, it will come to light! The world is growing smaller every day, Jack, as humanity takes each step closer to discovery. I want to use my knowledge to help people! One day they will know I am not a witch, but a form of doctor, too!" She would proclaim that and every fiber of his being agreed. She had been destined for greatness.

What had cut her life so short? It trembled on the edge of his memory, but for the life of him he could not will it forth.

His attention was wrested back as Nat scurried over to someone curled up alongside the wall. Like a ghostly fairy, he skipped over to find himself again; it was kind of humbling and distressing, seeing himself in the grips of the strange illness, gaunt and sweaty and groaning. Nat kneeled down beside him to roll him onto his back, while the phantom Jack crouched down to eagerly watch her administer the medicine. Everything was so hazy from that time; he very barely remembered her visit to the sick house, but the delirious fever had him in such wild thralls that his memory failed him for the most part.

"Nat… No… You shouldn't be here…" His voice was weak and feeble and raspy. After forcing out the words he instantly dissolved into a series of wracking, rattling coughs that shook his entire frail body. Nat gently shushed him and brushed a few strands of his oak-brown hair from his slick forehead.

"Be at ease, Jack. I am going to save you and everybody else," she assured him with such gentleness he had never heard from her before. It was a complete dichotomy from the Nat that he knew, who held him at arm's length with a cold, calculated meaning. God, he wished the present her would look at him the way her past self was looking at his living body; her smile was so pure and warm like the radiating rays of the sun, and her green eyes were filled to the brim with the most powerful love he had ever seen. She wasn't even looking at him directly, but the fact that she had looked at him like that _once_ was both liberating and gut-wrenching. What had happened in the span of four hundred years? Surely she had learned of his true identity at some point. Why hide? Why lie? Jack just couldn't figure it out… Or maybe he didn't want to.

Nat crushed a mixture of the herbs in a little bowl into a thick, succulent paste. "Jack, I need you to eat this," she commanded and scooped up a bit of the paste with her finger, holding it to his mouth. His past self groaned and shook his head weakly, panting as his fever continued to mount.

"Nat… I… I am done for… Save yourself." Nat's shoulders sagged as she sighed lightly, a hint of a wistful smile on her lips.

"Oh, Jack. I was saved a long time ago." Her whisper was like a breath of the wind, fleeting and barely audible, but powerful enough to knock Jack right off his feet. She popped the paste into her mouth before leaning over, grabbing Jack's face gently to part his lips before enveloping them with her own. Jack knew that she was only forcing the concoction into his mouth to force him to swallow it, but that fact didn't seem to want to register in his mind. His ghostly fingers feathered over his deathly pale lips which seemed to recall the sensation of her mouth against his own, tingling and titillated. _She kissed me. She_ _ **saved**_ _me._

Jack wasn't prepared for the landscape to shift again; he gasped and fell back on his haunches as it dissolved around him. He was out in the street again, and this time it was eerily familiar to him; the village was in the claws of a savage winter, with snow piled high on the thatch roofs and sweeping in gross waves alongside the street to form great drifts. A great crowd had gathered in the small courtyard in front of what was once the sick house, which Jack remembered actually served as the community doctor's office. The community physician had sought the aid of a traveling plague doctor, who took over once the old doctor succumbed to the respiratory illness. Jack phased through the crowd until he came to the front, and was very alarmed to see the mayor with a kneeling Nat before him, for he had her arm twisted painfully behind her back. Her cascade of blonde hair lay in sheared streams about her knees; it had been sliced through just below her ears. It was an act of dishonor.

"This has gone on long enough!" the mayor was hollering. By the wild, beastly look in his injected eyes and the tomato hue to his face, Jack could instantly see the man had become deranged. "The winter should have long since been over! This is God's judgement upon us for allowing this witch to live among us!"

"Please, doctor, she saved us- and you! Because of her, all the children survived!" a woman shouted from the crowd. A ripple of agreement chorused through them, but Jack was alarmed to hear that it was fainter than he would expect.

"Her witchcraft was an act against God! She had no right to act against his will and use her pagan arts in his temple!" Nat said nothing as he twisted her arm further, only cried out in pain and hung her head. He could see streaks of bright red blood in the blonde curls where she had been struck with a blunt object. "Look around you! You know it to be true! Unless we be rid of the witch, this endless winter will continue and we shall truly perish! God is giving us the chance to repent!"

"Stop this! You're a _madman_!" It was Jack's own voice this time. Beside him, his lanky brown-haired form shoved the adults to stay front and center.

"Silence, boy!" The mayor snarled at him with all the viciousness of a feral wolf. Both Jack and his ghostly counterpart took involuntary steps back in the face of such venom. "Are you in league with this witch?"

"No! _No_!" Nat suddenly screamed, writhing in the man's iron grip. "I will confess! _I will confess_! Just leave Jack out of it!" She calmed down after her desperate fit as the entire town looked upon her in shock, most of all Jack, who's chest was heaving as he fought against everything he knew and allow her to sacrifice herself. Suddenly the adults began to take up the chant, pumping fists and pitchforks into the air- " _Kill the witch! Kill the witch!_ " The mayor grinned demonically as his victory was all but handed to him. He wrested Nat up by her arm and began half-pushing, half-dragging her down the street, with the crowd surging around him to chuck stones or whatever piece of debris they could at the hapless girl. Jack's ghostly self could run alongside them just fine, simply phasing through whatever impeded his path, but his real self was left in the dust, on his hands and knees screaming.

" _Nat! Don't do this!_ _ **Nathalie**_!" Her feet scrabbled uselessly in the cold-packed dirt as she was hauled towards her solitary cabin in the woods. Her lingering blond strands flashed in the white moonlight as she whipped her head to look at him, through the ghostly apparition of the pale boy of the future to the ghost of his past self wailing her name.

"Thank you… for everything."

Jack was forced to follow as the landscape shifted to the cottage, though everything within him didn't want to witness what happened next. Nat was shoved into her cabin and a piece of thick wood lodged under the doorknob so she could not escape… and then they brought the torches. Jack jumped through the building walls, expecting to find Nat screaming, crying, terrified, and desperate for a way to escape. Instead, he found her sitting calmly against one of the walls, tenderly holding a little potted flower that bloomed despite the winter's incessant chill.

"Nat…" he whispered, his thick voice choking his throat more than the smoke that was now billowing in the ceiling. Nat let out a quiet cough as she gently stroked the bright pink petals of the small flower; a single tear rolled down her cheek to splash down onto its silky surface.

"I wish I could have told him," she sighed quietly to the flower. The flames began to crackle as they eagerly licked at the wooden walls of the cottage, climbing to stretch their red fingers to the black night sky. The smoke blanketed the ceiling like a puffy dark comforter, while smaller wisps weaved about the lower latitude, diving into Nat's failing lungs eagerly. She began to hack and cough like the rest of the town had during the plague, doubling over and knocking the pot off her lap. It shattered and soil spilled out like blood, with the flower's frail roots now poking out of the dark substance. Nat collapsed onto her side as she fought for breath and reached out with a trembling had to cup it ever-so-gently and hold it to her chest. The blooming flower perfectly aligned with her heart, which was beating slower and slower by the second. Jack watched helplessly. He had never felt so useless in his entire life; even though he knew this had already happened, that there was nothing at he could do, he could not fight the overwhelming urge to do something, anything. _She doesn't deserve to die like this!_ Nat let out a deep, contented sigh and closed her eyes, embracing the end while Jack looked on as a unwilling spectator.

"I love you… _Always_."

The ceiling could bear no more. With a sickening crunch, the weight-bearing beam snapped right up the middle. Everything collapsed in on itself, an inferno of red and orange and yellow and ashy black, and Jack just stood there, a pale white ghost enshrined in the roaring flames, a ghost who could not even touch Nat's beautiful, rosy skin as her life literally burned away.

It was close to dawn by the time the fire finally died. Jack sat with his knees drawn up beside the smoldering wreckage, number and more chill than the instant he plunged into the freezing waters of the lake four hundred years ago. His pale eyes watched unseeing as the smoke trails slowly rose in ethereal wisps to the heavens. They looked up with cold indifference; the world did not weep for Nathalie. The stars still shone with all their brilliance. The pale moon said nothing; it refused to cast its lovely white rays upon the scene to illuminate her final resting place. Jack's stomach was so twisted and sickened that nausea threatened to do him in at any moment. He had never imagined it would've been like this. _Never_. He would never be able to look her the same way again, knowing she was haunted by this grave injustice. Now, at least, he was haunted too.

" _Tsk_. Humans always were such barbaric creatures, never to know what a plague they are upon the Earth and each other." Jack glanced over his shoulder as a woman spoke, her voice as smooth as velvet and carrying the authority of a queen. She stood a few feet behind him looking upon the embers with eyes like fresh-cut diamond, harsh and yet loving at the same time. They were exactly like Nat's emerald eyes in that way. Her dress wasn't white, but the color of red maple leaves and rich roses and ripened apples; her hair trailed down to her calves, curling cascades of ringlets the color of hardy oak and hard tree nuts. She was every bit of gorgeous as he imagined Nat's predecessor would be, but yet she still couldn't hold a candle to Nat's angel-like beauty. Jack watched from his little perch as she strode across the small clearing to stop in front of the wreckage. She waved her hand over the smoking mess, and Jack watched in awe as the little pink flower budded from the ashes, soaking up the moon's brilliance to shine like pink opal in the bleak night. "Rise, little one. Your story doesn't end here."

Jack inhaled sharply as the ashes shifted about and Nat sat up, blinking blearily as the gray powder rained down from her hair and body. She was holding the small flower in its little mound of soil in her hands, and her blonde hair had re-grown to its waterfall length, streaming behind her like rivers of gold cutting through the black ash. She looked up with confused green eyes at the regal woman before her.

"Who… Are you?"

"I am Mother Nature… And you, kind child who bears the Earth's soul, shall succeed me."

That was where it ended. The light came with the rising of the spring sun, sending Jack out of the past and back into the present. It took a moment for him to adjust to the bright light and scent of wildflowers gracing his nose instead of the bitter tang of burned wood; he was sitting on the mosaic, the container of Nat's memories held in a white-knuckled grip. He felt something wet sliding down his cheeks and swept his finger over his face to see them come away with sparkling tears. He looked down at the box, then with a disgusted shout, flung it aside. It landed in a thick sprig of grass a few yards away. Jack fisted his fluffy white hair as he curled up, shaking at the gravity of the sequence of events he had just witness. It was horrible. He wanted to be sick. Nat had been shouldering that all her life. No wonder she couldn't be near him. It brought all that back, all that pain and suffering and that gruesome, God-awful-

"Jack…?" He gasped in shock and jerked up, eyes flashing wildly in panic. She stood at the edge of the clearing, wary but concerned. Beautiful, she was _so_ beautiful, like a goddess descended to the mortal plane. Her green eyes slowly trailed to the box, which was turned at just the right angle to show the small drawing of child Nat on the cover. As her emerald eyes drifted back to meet his like cold ice, he shivered and averted his gaze, squeezing his eyes shut for the guilt prevented him from looking at her. What would she say now? He betrayed her trust. He should have waited for her to trust him, to be willing to face what had happened; now he had all but forced her hand, forced her to confront that bitter end to her life. He didn't even care about finding out about why they couldn't be near each other now. He grabbed his staff, preparing to take off. He couldn't bear it. He needed to get away, give her some time, yeah, that was it-

"I meant what I said that night. _Always_."


	11. Chapter 10: One Day

"I meant what I said that night. _Always._ "

Nathalie swallowed as Jack's crystal-ice eyes frantically bounded around her face, fearfully looking for any sort of anger or hurt. She would've thought that she would be angry at him for delving into her memory without permission, but really, she couldn't be. Nathalie had purposefully hidden their relationship from him for fear of the ultimate consequences, so in actuality, she deserved the transgression. Whether she liked it or not, Jack deserved to know everything there was to know about the depth of the love between them, and that they were doomed even in their second life. So, no, Nat's expression was not angry in the slightest… It was just sad- dismally, pitifully, heartbreakingly sad. Jack slowly lowered his staff to the ground, seemingly abandoning his frantic thoughts of running away.

He looked as if he were about to ask her why, but a small realization dawned on his pale features. Of course she didn't want to discuss it. Nathalie had died a brutal, horrible, unnecessary death. No one would want that memory relived. Yet, that wasn't the entire story; it was just a piece in the puzzling predicament that existed between the two spirits who couldn't be closer, but also couldn't be further apart. The soles of Nat's feet ground against the rough stone as she approached. With a guilty swallow, Jack's gaze dropped to the grass he was sitting on. Nathalie said nothing and did nothing, only eased herself down beside him and drew her legs up to her chest to dismally hug her knees.

"Why…?" the word finally breathed past the barrier of his lips, hanging in the air like the precarious ice crystals he formed on the eaves of houses. Nathalie drew in a breath before releasing it in a long, heaving sigh, closing her eyes as she tried to figure out the best way to divulge the entirety of the story.

"The previous Mother Nature told me that you and I would destroy one another, Jack." She opened her eyes to peer at him sadly. He didn't look surprised; likely, he had already figured it out himself at this point but had been desperately trying to deny it. "Hold up your hand." Jack did as bid, and Nathalie pressed her comparably smaller hand against his. Instantly, tendrils of ice began to snake across her palm and around her slender digits, patterns burning patterns across the sensitive skin; likewise, Jack's snow-white hand began to sweat and burn with pink fever. "We are polar opposites, two sides of a coin that must never face. If the two of us were to linger together for two long, we would forget ourselves and the world's balance would be disrupted… This is a measure that the Earth and the Man in the Moon set in place in order to remind us of our duty."

"That's not fair!" Instead of his hand flying away from hers, he stubbornly pushed her fingers apart to lace them together. Nathalie winced at the burning pain the ice wrought, but at the same time, she dreadfully cherished the feeling of his hand holding hers, so tightly, so insistently, like he was her lifeline. Bitter tears began to bubble up at the brim of her eyes. "It's not fair," he repeated softly. The cold was creeping up her wrist now, but Nat be damned if she were going to let go now. "I can't accept that, Nat, not after knowing it all, _seeing_ -" The words choked in his throat as he clenched his teeth tightly. His gaze dropped down to their linked, ailing hands for a moment before meeting hers, gleaming, like sunlight reflecting on shards of gemstone ice. "There _has_ to be a way." Nathalie wanted to believe so, too… But four hundred years of heartache and a millennium more was just too much. With a will hanging on by a thread, she forcibly pried her hand away from Jack's wrapping it in the fabric of her dress so it could recover from the freezing burns. She turned her head away, but only to spare herself the absolutely devastated look on his face.

"Neither of us may like it, but we cannot change that, Jack. The laws of nature cannot so easily be bent."

"Well, too bad, 'cuz I'm gonna bend 'em." Her mouth was open in shock as she looked at him incredulously; did he not know the forces at play? It was not such a simple matter as to declare it, but sure enough, his icy eyes were blazing with the ferocity of a thousand suns as he regarded her intently. "I mean it. I'm gonna find a way for us to be together this time. Don't give up on me, Nat." Nathalie's bottom lip wobbled precariously as an ugly sob threatened to spill out of her from the sheer amount of joy that burst inside of her at that moment. Crying out his name, she launched herself at him not caring of the pain that was to follow; she bowled him over onto his back as she threw her arms around his chest and heaved pitiful sobs into his ice-encrusted hoodie, releasing several lifetime's worth of pent-up misery and sorrow with every wracking wail.

The numbing chill that spread over her was nothing compared to the wrenching twisting wound that had ailed her for four hundred years. Nathalie for so long had convinced herself that it was never meant to be, that she should never approach him no matter how much she longed to, that it would be the death of them both. All it had taken was that simple declaration to send the castle she had built around her heart to shatter under the force of the bold battering ram, crumbling to pieces around her. As she fractured into pieces on top of him, Jack just whispered soothing words and lightly stroked her cascade of blonde hair, threading it with wires of ice. Though Nathalie longed to cry into him all day until she was spent, she knew neither of them could handle that, and so she settled for a few minutes. She pulled back still sniffling but trying to regain her composure, chips of ice fragmented from her frozen clothes. Jack gave her a wry, rueful smile as he lightly fanned his flushed face. They could talk all they liked about finding a way to coexist in close proximity, but it was clear that it was going to be a massive undertaking. It was then that Baby Tooth came wriggling out of his hoodie pocket, cheeping angrily that she had nearly been crushed under Nat's weight.

"I'm sorry, Baby Tooth. I didn't know you were in there," she apologized with a small giggle. The little bird creature huffed in derision but settled on her shoulder, giving her cheek a reassuring rub with her iridescent feathers. "Thank you. I feel much better now." It was true. They hadn't solved their problem in the slightest, but Nathalie felt like a massive weight had been lifted from her shoulders. The grass crunched under Jack's feet as he sat up, a frown now pervading his features.

"As much as we would like to take care of this now, there's still Pitch. He's the number-one priority."

"Right…" Incredibly, Nathalie had presently forgotten the matter of the dark man, though he had nearly succeeded in killing her only the night before. She compulsively rubbed her hands up her arms and looked down at the flowy fabric of her dress, swallowing. She had definitely underestimated Pitch. If he knew about the Earthsong, there was no telling what else he knew.

"Hey," Jack said. She felt his fingertips ghost across her cheek, leaving little sparkling ice crystals blooming like geodes on her soft skin, but he pulled away before he damaged her too much. The action accomplished its goal of gaining her attention, however, as her nervous eyes flickered upward to meet his. "Don't worry. Let's leave it to North and the others, okay? They'll find him." Nat's pessimistic dark side wanted to argue that Pitch had found her once already and escaped to boot, but the level of confidence in his gentle smile locked it into a little box and tossed the key into the raging sea. "Just… Let's just stay here and relax, all right?"

It was hard to do considering they burned each other literally each time they touched, but the temptation was still too much for Nathalie. After she nodded, he laid back into the soft springy grass with a smug grin, resting his hands behind his head with just enough room for Nathalie to nestle into the crook of his body without quite touching him. He sure was a sly boy. With a smile bordering between coyness and lasciviousness, Nathalie stretched out onto her side beside him, turning her head to rest just barely at the junction of his arm to his shoulder. Her keen green eyes did not miss the sharp inhale he took as her soft blonde hair brushed up against the sleeve of his hoodie. Though Nat ached to touch him, to flush her body against his and entwine their hands and simply savor his presence, that was a luxury not afford to her. A pauper of a love four hundred years late would have to settle with what she could obtain.

"Hey… Nat?" he asked after an eternity of comfortable silence.

"Mhmm?" Being bathed in the glowing sunlight in the small swathe of land by the rippling pond had lulled Nathalie into drowsiness. Her eyes fluttered away the encroaching sleep to see Jack peering down at her curiously.

"Could you tell me more about the Earthsong?" _Ah, of course he would be curious._ It wasn't like she had been given the time to elaborate, slowly turning into a Nat-cicle and all. She shifted her position such that she was lying on her back, one hand held up to tease around her locks of blonde hair while the other was pushed into the soft embrace of the sprigs of grass. Her emerald eyes mirrored the lazy clouds moseying along the sea that was the endless blue sky.

"Well… It is as I said. The Earth speaks in a language long forgotten by men; it has always been so. The Earthsong is ever-present in the world where spring and summer are in session. It is her song that I use to channel her energy and create life. It is not I power I possess inherently," she explained. "In fall, the plants begin to die, and the animals hibernate and prepare for winter, yes? This is because the Earthsong dwindles. The Earth no longer speaks to that part of the world, to usher in the winter that punishes man for their transgressions." She lifted her hands to begin kneading them together. "That is why I am much weaker during the fall, and completely powerless during winter. If I cannot hear her, I cannot channel her life force. Only upon the renewal of life does she begin to sing once more, and that is when I am able to turn winter into spring."

"That's complicated. I just wave the stick and _boom_!, ice and snow and wind." His abrupt and simple reply made Nat her give a piggish snort in laughter. He gave her a boorish look at her uncontained amusement, then smiled despite himself. He shifted his position a bit such that he was on his side now, head propped up on an elbow; they had flipped. "Hey, Nat? What happened to your predecessor? I thought if Mother Nature dies, the Tree of Life dies, and no more passage of seasons, right?"

"It is more complicated than that. If Mother Nature bequeaths her powers to another, then her death has no effect on the Tree of Life whatsoever. In regard to the Tree of Life 'dying,' perhaps I should have used a better term- the Tree of Life cannot _die_ , truly. It is the Earth's hand, extending forth to balance the passage of time and evolution. It can be halted by Mother Nature's untimely death and will wither, but in time it will repair itself. However, that can take centuries in real time. There would be devastating effects on the world as we know it. Even if Pitch took an axe to the tree and hacked it to splinters, in time, it would reform anew."

"Several hundreds years is plenty of time for Pitch to get up to no good," Jack grumbled bitterly. His face took on a bright hue as if he had suddenly thought of something brilliant. "Hey, Nat- if you passed on your powers to someone else, we could be together, right?" He blinked at her when she laughed wryly.

"I wish things were that simple. I would revert to an ordinary human or fade from existence, whichever I chose… But I would no longer be immortal. I would grow old, and die, just like everyone else."

"Oh." Nathalie wished against everything that the solution was that easy. One lifetime would be enough for her… But Jack would remain a teenager forever, and she could never ask him to suffer through her death a second time. It would be blissful at first, but Nathalie would not be able to cope with growing older while Jack remained the same, either. His lips poked out as his frowned deeply, wracking his brain for a solution to their present dilemma. Nathalie smiled, just staring as the gears whirled in his white-haired head. He had always been so compassionate and selfless, and it was intriguing to see him riddling out the problem for her sake as much as for the satisfaction of his own selfish ends. While he was preoccupied with his brainstorming, Nathalie boosting herself up onto his arms, face drifting up to press a light, chaste kiss onto his lips. She felt heat blaze across her face as he blushed fiercely, and startled blue eyes stared hard down into her own amused green irises.

"I apologize. You just looked so cu- _Oh_!" She was interrupted as he skillfully maneuvered himself on top of her, hands planted on either side of her head and knees on either side of her chest, body hovering enough centimeters above her own to prevent any of the ill side effects. His smirk was positively intoxicating. Breathless though she hadn't even moved, she combed her fingers through her disarrayed hair, now the one who had a fire alighting her face. His playful expression instantly turned to one of dire seriousness.

"I mean it, Nat. I'm gonna find a way. I'm not gonna stop 'til I do." Nathalie smiled sweetly.

"Well, I suppose it is a good thing I am patient." He grunted in laughter, that cocky smile that Nathalie found so breathtaking creeping across his face again. The arms propped on either side of her head fell down onto the elbows, bringing Jack's face close enough for his lips to envelop her own. Nat's eyes fell shut like drawn curtains, wishing to commit the feeling of those soft lips over hers to permanent memory. One day, perhaps, he would be able to kiss her without the feeling of cold fire blazing across her lips, and wouldn't have to hover over her like a puppet suspended on strings, and could allow his hands to roam freely over her body…

One day, as fate would have it, was closer than they thought…


	12. Chapter 11: Meeting Jamie

"Jack, are you sure about this?" Nathalie frowned nervously from atop her Pegasus. The horse, sensing her anxiety, tossed its mighty head with a whinny, its mane rippling like thick cloth as it stamped a hoof against the concrete road in the quite Maine neighborhood. Following her recovery in the Tooth Palace, Nathalie had been shuttled to North's Arctic workshop in a desperate exercise to try and keep Pitch Black from locating her again; the elves and yetis could only amuse the energetic Jack for so long, and while he had been poking around looking for something to entertain him, he had spontaneously decided to pay a visit to the sleepy little town where his beloved friend Jamie resided. Nathalie had vaguely recalled mention of the little boy during their first meeting. "North will not approve of our sneaking out," she fretted, "and this is where you first spotted Pitch, correct? What if he decides to attack us again? The little boy will be caught up in the crossfire…"

"It's all right, Nat," the frost spirit replied reassuringly as he sidled up to the horse's flank to offer her a hand. As she took it, trying to ignore the prickling pain that bloomed across her palm and fingers from the ice crystals settling there, she slid down from the horse's back. "It was Jamie and his friends that helped defeat Pitch last time. He knows better than to show his face around here." The confident smile on his face eased her nerves a little, but only just. Compulsively, she smoothed down the creases in the fabric of her dress, looking down. She gasped lightly as his finger caught the underside of her chin, tilting it back up so his ice-crystal ice could meet hers of summer leaves. "Promise. You worry so much, you know; can you just enjoy this? For me?"

Nathalie's shoulders sagged as she breathed out a loving sigh. _He is doing this all for me,_ she thought with a swelling heart. Nathalie had been basically a nervous wreck the entirety that they had been in contact, between keeping her secret and the looming threat of death, so of course there had been little time to actually enjoy herself. For his sake, she took a deep breath while pushing back the flood of nervous energy writhing inside of her. She deserved at least a few moments of respite; it couldn't hurt. Jack smiled sunnily as she opened her eyes to nod encouragingly at him. "Atta girl. Now, come on!" he grinned as he pranced over to the sidewalk and hopped over a wooden fence.

Her Pegasus snorted and meandered into the neighboring yard to begin munching on the grass; it was as invisible as she, considering humans no longer believed in such creatures, so Nathalie didn't give much thought to hiding him. She followed after Jack, creating a stairway in the form of a twisted, gnarled tree that curved in an extreme spiral and whose trunk could easily bear her weight. She skipped over its uneven, bumpy surface, the soles of her bare feet causing new branches to bud, before she hopped down from the top of the fence. As the wind rushed into the skirt of her dress, she hastily pressed down the front to preserve some of her modesty, but the sides fluttered up around her thighs and gave much more of a show than she would've pleased. When she looked up with a red face, she saw Jack leaning against the siding of the house, arms crossed and looking like he had thoroughly enjoyed it. _Has he not matured at all in four hundred years?!_ She thought incredulously, face burning like the surface of the sun itself. His smirked widened at her obvious fluster. _Apparently_ _ **not**_ _._ Nat didn't know what was worse; his reaction or the fact that she kind of enjoyed it.

"Ah-ahem, Jamie?" she reminded him with a polite cough.

"Oh, right, duh," he sputtered with a slight jerk and light blush. He whipped away from the wall to pick up a small pebble, then turned around and chucked it at the second-floor window. A second later, the bottom pane was flung up and a toothy, messy-haired young boy was sticking his head out.

"Hey! Jack!" When he flashed the teenager a bright grin, Nat giggled; the fact that he was missing a tooth made him all the more adorable. "I'll be right down!" he shouted down and his tousled head disappeared back into the room. Nat winced as she heard quite a lot of painful-sounding thumps and bangs, followed by the boy's irritated yelps. She could even hear his little feet pounding through the house as he descended the stairs and careened through the halls to come bursting out of the front door, panting heavily from excited exertion and shoes flopping, untied on his feet. "Jack! Where've ya been? I missed you!" he squealed as he flung himself at Jack from several yards away.

"Whoa!" Jack cried, having to dip far forward to keep Jamie from face-planting into the dirt. The boy only giggled ecstatically as Jack enveloped him in a tight, crushing hug. Unseen by Jamie, Nathalie smiled heartwarmingly at the scene; the purely happy smile that was alighting Jack's pale face was plenty testament to how special the little boy was to him.

After a minute of embracing, Jack pulled back and rested his hands one either of Jamie's shoulders. "Jamie, I got someone I want ya to meet."

"Ooh? Who is it? Who is it? Oh my God, it's March, is it a _leprechaun_?" he screamed, jumping up and down so vigorously that one of his loose shoes actually did fling off and shoot into one of the rosebushes. "Oops."

"No, it's not the leprechaun! Calm down and just let me tell you!" Jack laughed while rowdily trapping him in a headlock and drilling his fist into the top of Jamie's head to further muss his already messy hair. Jamie obviously was in no sort of pain, because he squealed in laughter and kicked out his legs wildly, clutching onto the muscle of Jack's bicep with repeated giggles of "Okay, okay!" Arm still slackly wrapped around his little neck, Jack crouched down a little to whisper in his ear before gesturing with his chin in Nathalie's direction. She flushed lightly and made sure she was presentable, tucking in any stray hairs and smoothing down her dress again, before straightening her back and smiling with all the grace of a queen. Jamie blinked a few times, trying to process whatever Jack had uttered in his ear, before his eyes went as wide as dinner plates.

"Woooooowww! You're so pretyyyyyyy!" he cooed in utter delight. Nathalie chuckled shyly and swept a swathe of her blonde hair behind her ear.

"Why, thank you, Jamie."

"You know my name?!"

"Of course. I was very excited to meet you."

"Oh, boy, oh, boy! Show me what you can do? Please, please, please?!" he begged, writhing around in Jack's grasp for a few moments before the teenager released him. He landed on his bum in the grass, but he lost no momentum; he immediately scrabbled to his feet, smearing grass stains over his one socked foot as he ran over to her excitedly. He circled her obsessively, running his hands over the silken fabric of her skirt and fingering the curled ends of her golden-blonde hair and exclaiming in awe at the quiver and bow strapped to her back. "You're an archer? That's so _awesome_!"

"He's an excitable one," Nat mused to Jack, who was watching the giddy boy with a warm, brotherly smile.

"Yep. Never a dull moment with Jamie." The boy had grabbed a piece of chalk lying discarded in the grass to zip over to the fence, drawing various targets into its surface while begging her to display her shooting prowess. Nathalie snickered in amusement, but his enthusiasm was quite infectious; she crossed the yard to stand at the side of the house, the maximum distance away from the targets, before removing her bow and notching an arrow into its taut string. She tossed her head to throw the hair on her right side away from her dominant arm, breathed in deeply to center herself, then pulled the arrow back over her shoulder to take aim. Her eyebrow quirked slightly as she noticed Jack shamelessly gawking at her arm muscles again. _He has no subtlety when it comes to checking me out, does he?_ She thought wryly. Well, if Jack and Jamie wanted a show, by all rights, she should give them one.

When Nat released the string, the arrow blasted from the bow to embed itself arrowhead-deep into the center of the first target, and trawling ivy began to twist and writhe into existence at its core. No sooner had the arrow left her bow did she nock another and send it screaming towards the next target; Jamie and Jack stood slack-jawed as she rapidly hit all seven targets in a matter of seconds, each arrow perfectly finding its mark and leaving the fence smothered in interlocking green leaves of ivy. A little smug, she even curtsied.

"That was _unreaaaaaaaaal_!" Jamie howled vivaciously once his brain had regained its ability to form words. Nat laughed and returned her bow to its rightful place, then walked to the fence to begin digging the arrows out of the wood. "Jack, you're girlfriend is amazing!" In an instant, Nathalie and Jack had identical blushes blazing across their shocked faces. As they both turned their backs to the puzzled little boy, both shielding their faces with their hands, he looked between them repeatedly. "What? Did I say something wrong? I thought you guys were, y'know-"

"You're right, Jamie, but it's still kinda embarrassing," Jack groaned. Of course he was right; after all, she and Jack had spent pretty much the entirety of yesterday afternoon cuddling and exchanging sweet nothings and occasionally little kisses, but… Nathalie's brains apparently had not truly registered their association as boyfriend and girlfriend. A mixture of mortified and overjoyed, she peered through her slender fingers at the white-haired boy, who was grinning shyly at her while rubbing the back of his neck. As their eyes met, his expression melted into one of undeniable affection, and her heart twisted into a happy little knot in her chest. _My… boyfriend…_

"Okay, stop looking at each other like that, it's gross!" Jamie complained while sticking out his tongue. Jack snorted and shoved him lightly in his shoulder.

"You brought it up!"

"Not so you two could make kissy faces at each other!"

"What the-? We were not! That's it, you little-"

"Aaaaaah!" Jamie screamed as Jack bowled him over to begin tickling his sides relentlessly. "Ah! No! Stop! I'm sorry! Please!" he howled in laughter as he writhed around under Jack's strong grip, tears pouring down his cheeks from the ticklish assault. Nathalie chuckled and kneeled down, watching the exchange with a smile. _He really is like a big brother…_ It wasn't hard to imagine; he had a little sister at the time of his death, so those tendencies were almost ingrained in him. _I'm glad that Jack has Jamie. He won't be as lonely._ Jack gave Jamie's head one final, playful shove before hopping off him, leaving the little boy wheezing, flushed, and thoroughly giddy. His hair stuck up in odd places, decorated with blades of grass, as he looked at Nat breathlessly. "Eheh… Ehehe… So, Miss Mother Nature, you make the plants grow 'n stuff?"

"Nat is fine," she told him before swirling her hand, making a white lily bloom before her. "I am the one who brings spring to the world, like Jack does winter. My main duty is to cause the plants to return to life and jump-start their natural reproductive processes, but I can create them where I wish. I can also communicate with animals and create them, though that is much harder for me."

"Cooooool."

"Hey, why don't ya show him the Pegasus?"

" _You have a_ _ **Pegasus**_?" His jaw nearly hit the floor as he practically vibrated with excitement. Nathalie smirked and brought her fingers to her mouth to whistle for the winged house; as the shrieking noise pierced the air, it responded with a faraway neigh and the faint rush of feathers. A shadow fell over the backyard a few seconds later as it landed beside the now-standing Nat, and she ran a praising hand over the rippling muscles of its flank. Jamie had his fists balled up as he gawked at it with sparkling eyes, but seemed hesitant to approach, especially as the horse blew a sharp breath of air from its large nostrils and stamped at the ground.

"Come here, Jamie. He's very docile," she said with a reassuring wave of her hand. Jamie gulped audibly and timidly tip-toed over, keeping a wide berth until he was at Nat's side. She gently grabbed his wrist to pull his hand up to the horse's side, allowing him to pet the creature. He began chuckling nervously, hand stiffly patting its belly, before easing into long stroke. As the horse's wings folded at its side, he took to playing carefully with the feathers, appreciating their softness.

"He's beautiful." The horse appeared to have understood the compliment, as it reared its head around to nuzzle into his cheek. He shrieked with laughter and hugged its head to nuzzle it back. Nathalie smiled the entire time. It did her heart good to see a child like him so in awe and appreciative of nature- a sentiment much lost in the current generation of human beings.

"Wait until you see the dragon."

"The what?" Jamie breathed in a harsh, horse whisper, looking dangerously close to cardiac arrest. Nathalie's face immediately took on a pointed edge to glare warningly at Jack.

"What?"

"Jack, I cannot take him to the Tree of Life. It's much too dangerous!"

" _The what?_ " Jamie breathed again, clutching his chest as he started breathing faster in pure rapture.

"Come on, Nat! Pitch has no idea where the Tree of Life is. Come on, he'd love all the little habitat bubbles, especially the dinosaurs!"

" _ **The what?!"**_ Jamie's face had taken on a pale pallor. Nathalie was quite concerned he would faint, so she braced her body behind him, all while continue to stare at Jack sternly.

"Jack, that is precisely how he could _find_ the Tree of Life." She crossed her arms primly. She hated that she couldn't show Jamie the Tree of Life, as she was sure that he would be so very excited, but this was a line she simply could not cross. "This is exactly what he could be waiting for. Why go looking for it himself when I could simply lead him to it?"

"Well, that is _exactly_ like Pitch," Jack conceded through clenched teeth. The disappointed look on his pale face, combined with Jamie tossing a pitifully pleading expression up at her, chipped away at her firm resolve. _"You worry so much, you know. Can you just enjoy this? For me?"_ Jack's earlier words rang hollowly in her chest, making her cringe a little. It _was_ dangerous, but perhaps she was overreacting? Pursing her lips as she wrestled with the decision, the two of them continue to stare expectantly at her, hastening the collapse of her willpower.

"Oh, good _grief_ , all right," she consented with an exacerbated sigh. Simultaneously, they released triumphant crows and threw their fists in the air. " _But_ ," she added tersely while holding up her index finger, "it is to be only this one trip, and it will be brief."

"Thank you, Nat!" Jamie beamed and hugged her legs. Despite herself, she smiled and patted the top of his head. "Can I ride on the Pegasus?!" She nodded and picked him up to set him on the winged horse, watching as he babbled excitedly and patted the top of its head. She hesitated a moment before climbing up, weighted.

Why did she feel as if she were making a colossal mistake?


	13. Chapter 12: War and Peace

_**Author's Note:**_ _Hello, all! I am pleased to announce that this story now has an accompanying Spotify playlist. Follow the instructions provided in the Foreword if you want to check it out!_

Jamie's eyes were sparkling like a galaxy in motion as he stood frozen in the entrance to Nathalie's hidden hideaway; his little body simply couldn't process the majesty of the Tree of Life's sprawling mass stretching through the domed cave and the scaled bulk of Salazar the dragon snoozing beneath its mass of branches, so he had to take a minute or so to absorb it all. As soon as he did, a shrill scream of excitement erupted from his wee little lungs and he skipped his feet like he was running in place, throwing up dust clouds around him. He didn't know what to focus on first and so his head zipped about in all directions. Nat giggled and strode into the natural room, gesturing lightly for Jamie to follow. He scampered after her eagerly, clinging to the softly billowing folds of her dress.

"It's the biggest tree I've ever seen…" Jamie whispered in awe as his wide eyes fixated on the branch they passed; it was nearly as thick as three of him.

"This tree is as ancient as the Earth itself. It is Her history," Nathalie explained. "Do you see those strange fruits it bears, hiding amongst the leaves?" she asked while gesturing to the nearest mini-biome sphere where it sat atop a twisting branch, its iridescent surface rippling as a light breeze passed over it. "Those are the records. Within each one is a world in itself, home to creatures of that habitat and era. The farther back you trace along the tree, the further back in history you travel, all the way to the trunk, where life was but mere cells struggling to survive on an inhospitable planet."

"Wicked," Jamie breathed in approving awe. "I wanna look in one!" Nathalie complied with his wish; with a mere wave of her hands, the tree began to contort and writhe. It branches uncoiled and twisted around one another and coiled again, their gigantic green leaves quivering with the tremors. Jamie exhaled slowly in wonder as one of the branches dipped down to curl slowly around them, bearing one of the glittering clear bubbles close enough for him to observe. Within was the portrait of a deciduous forest on the onset of winter, where a pack of wolves were baying as they chased a massive elk through the thick trunks. Jamie hesitantly poked at the bubble's surface and jumped back when it easily bowed to his weight, allowing the tip of his finger to slip through the liquid-like surface. Then, without hesitation, he grabbed onto the branch on either side to shove his head into the bubble with a squeal of glee. Nathalie looked to Jack in amusement.

"You two are very much alike."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jack flushed while rubbing at the back of his neck. Nathalie laughed and looked back to the little boy as he yanked his head back out of the bubble with a breathless smile.

"This is amazing! Show me more, please, please!"

Nathalie allowed Jamie to enjoy the Tree of Life to his heart's content. The air of the cave was filled with groaning wood and shaking leaves as Nathalie traveled the cords of history, allowing Jamie to peek into the worlds of ages long past. He eagerly absorbed it all like a sponge; he would take his fill of one bubble before giddily requesting the next. Nathalie wouldn't have thought it possible, but once he had pored over the Tree's offerings for almost an hour, his eyes were shining even more brightly than when they had arrived. "This is so amazing… I can't believe something like this exists!" he grinned as he played with one of the leaves that Nathalie had allowed him to pluck from the tree (really, it wouldn't hurt it, and he thoroughly enjoyed the fact that it was bigger than his head). He waved it around like a flag as he jumped around Nat in a circle. "I dunno what was my favorite! I didn't know that dinosaurs had so many feathers! The unicorn was prettier than I ever imagined! All the really old fish things were kinda gross-looking but also really awesome! Jack, Jack, wasn't it so neat when that big crocodile-thing came swooping in and just _crunch_! ate that other fish and all that blood went everywhere?!" he screamed in rapture as he balled up his fists, one of them crinkling the thick stem of his new toy.

"Uh, yeah, it was cool," Jack responded lamely, because the poor boy was draped over one of the Tree's branches holding his stomach with a green tint to his pale face. Nathalie had spent a good five minutes teasing him for being so surprisingly squeamish. Nathalie, infected by the boy's boundless enthusiasm, smiled brightly and pointed at the base of the tree, where Salazar was watching with interest. Jamie's screams had of course woken him up long ago, but since he was with Nathalie, he had surmised that the little boy was no threat. A forked tongue flickered at the air as the earth spirit gestured to him.

"Jamie, would you like to meet Salazar before we leave!"

"Yep, yep, yep!" the boy cried and took off over the uneven ground for the dragon. He ran right up to his massive paws which could crush him underfoot with so much ease and grabbed on of his talons, shaking it like he would hands. "My name's Jamie! You're a beautiful dragon!" he gushed giddily. The dragon made a rumbling noise reminiscent of a purr and flicked his giant tail, clearly pleased with the praise. Nathalie and Jack followed more slowly, wishing to give Jamie room to explore the creature's features to his heart's content. Salazar didn't budge an inch as Jamie clambered onto his scaled back, using his ridged spikes for balance as he tottered up to his elephant-sized head. "Hey, Mr. Salazar, you want a head scratch?" he asked while stooping down to scratch at the scales beneath the holes that served as the lizard being's ears. Salazar's back leg began to pump and claw his foot into the ground while his chest rumbled in a thunderous purr, head twisting and tongue lolling out of his mouth with his eyes crinkled up in pleasure. Apparently, a head scratch was just what the dragon ordered. "Hehe! You're kinda like a big puppy and a big kitty all-in-one, aren'tcha?" Jamie cooed. Salazar growled happily in response. The cave rumbled as the dragon abruptly flipped onto his back, using his wing tip to push Jamie onto his stomach; he wriggled about, begging for more pets, and Jamie happily complied. Nathalie watched him with a warm smile.

"He really is such a curious, appreciative little boy," Nat remarked to Jack as he lounged against one of the tree's branches beside her. "I had quite forgotten about how inherently pure children are…" It had been a very, very long time since Nathalie had deigned to frolic amongst humanity. Man's callous treatment of the Earth and her bounties had only worsened in the last four hundred years; they no longer believed in the entity that was Mother Nature nor that the Earth had any sort of will, so there was no pleading to them to respect their natural surroundings. However, looking at Jamie and his enthusiastic outlook on everything, and his deep-rooted love for the wondrous things around him, Nathalie wondered if children were the key to reversing the sorry state of the world as it was.

"Yeah. He gives me as much hope as I do him," Jack smiled lovingly as he watched Jamie clamber all over the dragon. His gaze then flickered to her. "I think you would make a good Guardian, Nat."

"M-me? I don't know. The role of Guardians is to protect certain aspects of childhood, yes? I haven't the faintest idea what my role in such would be," she stammered shyly and fidgeted with the folds of her dress. Jack sidled over to where she was standing, close enough for it to be intimate but not close enough for them to touch and set of their adverse reactions, smiling sweetly. Nathalie didn't even need to wait for him to reassure her before she smiled too; just knowing that he was there for her set her heart to fluttering and her nerves to humming with a joyful buzz. As he went to say something, she caught the flicker of something over his shoulder and her eyes automatically followed the movement. The smile slowly fell from her lips as all the color drained from her face, and Jack looked at her in utter bewilderment. There, hovering over Jack's shoulder, was the faintest wisp of Pitch's dark sand in the form of a small insect. Nathalie's hand shot out to snatch it out of the air, enclosing it and crushing it within her fist, and Jack gasped in horror as the purple sand crystals leaked from between her fingers.

Nathalie's heart stopped in her chest. It was over. It was all over.

" _Salazar_!" she screamed as the cave began to rumble ominously. At the exact same time, Jack screamed for Jamie, forming an icy wind beneath his bare feet to scoop the perplexed boy off of the dragon's belly and vault up into the trembling leaves of the Tree of Life. The dragon snarled savagely, clawing up the earth in clumps as he whipped back upright, while Nat vaulted up his tree-trunk legs to plop down at the base of his neck, a saddleless dragon-rider. Above their heads, the circle where the earth above had fallen away was slowly being eclipsed of its light as a maelstrom of the shadowy purple-black sand swirled menacingly. "Get Jamie out of here!" she screamed at Jack as the dragon stretched out its massive wings. As it gave one powerful flap, the Tree whined and keened in the hurricane-force winds that tempested through the earthen dome. Pushing off with his sturdy legs, he bore Nathalie into the air, shooting through the opening just as the tornado of Pitch's sand began to spiral down. The scales on his front turned a burnt orange as fire gathered within his chest cavity; then, with a tremendous roar that sent toe tropical birds screeching into the heavens, it spilled from his maw to collide with the dark storm. The fire was white-hot and turned the sand into glass instantaneously; as the dragon shattered the grotesque crystal under his sharp claws, Nathalie bent backwards to wave her hand in the direction of the opening below. The trees surrounding the opening groaned and shifted, spreading their roots into a thick, interlocking woven mass that not even an ant could wriggle through. The glass shards tinkled harmlessly over the bark surface, and Pitch's sand could not wriggle its way through to do as it pleased with her blessed Tree of Life.

He would have to kill her in the skies- and Nathalie was not one to be killed so easily, not when she was fighting in her own domain.

"Pitch!" she yowled into the writhing black maw. The cyclone parted to reveal him standing amongst the whirling particles, hands clasped behind his back and sneer curling, as if he were a god descending among mortals to wreak havoc. Well, it wasn't an entirely inaccurate description. Wrenching her bow from her back and docking an arrow before he could even blink, she had the arrowhead trained on the spot between his eyes. "Do not think that this will be like last time. You've made a mistake coming here," she warned. Out of the corners of her eyes, she saw the faint pale form of Jack flitting through the air, Jamie tucked safely into his arms. Both of them cast worried glances her way before the winter wind carried them into the clouds, and out of Pitch's reach.

However, it also meant that Nathalie was without help from the Guardians for quite a while… But that mattered not, because reinforcements she had in plenty. A confident grin distorted her features, alighting her emerald eyes as her body began to sing with the blood rush of battle. It had been so very long since Nathalie had been able to let loose against a formidable opponent, and despite the stakes she could not help but be excited. The Earth began to thrum in tandem to her silent signaling; below, the trees began to writhe back and forth of their own accord, their branches twisting higher and higher as their growth rate began to accelerate. Flocks of birds began to take to the skies, toucans and parrots and songbirds and raptors alike to begin counter-currently flying around Pitch's own dark tempest. A distant yowl of a jaguar was joined by another, then another. Stampeding hooves rolled like distant thunder, approaching with great speed. Nathalie was very pleased to see a shadow of doubt darken his expression.

" _Brace yourself, Pitch Black_."


	14. Chapter 13: We All Fall Down

How? How did all manage to spiral out of control so quickly? Just one second ago, Nat was smiling so sweetly at him, and then the next Pitch's dark sand was swirling in a maelstrom above their heads, dangerously close to ending the world as they knew it. Jack's heart hammered in his chest as he skipped through the clouds above the rainforest with Jamie tucked under his arm; his mind was reeling like a whirlpool right now. He couldn't focus on one single coherent thought. For the fifth time since he had taken to the air, he halted his wintery jet stream to glance back at the purple-black storm raging above the cove where the Tree of Life was tucked away. The dragon had descended into the gaping maw of the hurricane; the only evidence of its survival were the streams of white-hot air that occasionally burst through the thick wall of sand, melting the particles together in glass like sinister obsidian.

"Jack! Jack, don't worry about me!" Jamie huffed, tugging insistently at his frosted hoodie. "All the Guardians are way too far away to help now. Miss Nat is fighting all by herself. You have to help her!" Jack didn't know what to do. Jamie was a liability and he could never live with himself if something happened to him, but he had to let the other Guardians know what was happening somehow. They had been stupid and snuck out of the North Pole; nobody knew where they were right now. He wrestled with himself, watching with rising agony as Pitch's dark storm raged against the roaring dragon that was bearing his beloved Nathalie through the tempest.

Suddenly, he became aware of a loud, adamant cheeping, and looked down just in time to see Baby Tooth's brilliant green head poke out of the pocket of his hood.

"Baby Tooth! What-? How long have you been in there?!" he cried in disbelief as she flew up to hover in his face. "Nevermind! You have to hurry and get Tooth and the others, okay? I have to stay here and help Nat," he ordered. She chittered lightly and looked off into the skyline, looking a bit overwhelmed. He used a finger to gently stroke her feathered head reassuringly. "You can do it, Baby Tooth. I'm counting on you." She looked back to him with those cute eyes, then nodded firmly and shot off into the air, wings flapping wildly as she sped as fast as she could towards their salvation.

Jack then dropped out of the air to dive back behind the waterfall, carrying Jamie inside. Nathalie had sealed the overhead entrance with a tangled puzzle of tree roots; though it quivered ominously with every rumble of the battle overhead, it held steady, not even a hint of dust slipping through the tightly-interlocked mass of roots. "Jamie, whatever you do, do not come out," he instructed firmly as he set him down by the front door of Nathalie's cabin. "Stay in here," he said as he wrested it open and all but shoved him inside. The Pegasus came trotting up, head tossing and hooves stamping and feathers ruffling as his master warred in the skies far above their heads. "Hey, I'm counting on you to look after him," he said to the winged horse as he lightly skipped past, patting his flank before rushing back outside.

Nathalie was strong, but he was going to fight, nonetheless.

He could _not_ lose her this time.

* * *

Nathalie looked from left to right, panting slightly. The tornadic maelstrom of Pitch's sand had enclosed around her in a swirling sphere, with the Bogeyman himself suspended near its epicenter on a platform of ever-shifting sand. In the writhing winds around her, the sand was taking shape into a menagerie of animals, much like the night when she and Jack had been attacked on the savannah. It seemed, for the sake of irony, he had decided to include a broader array of fauna this time; Nathalie felt like she was surrounded by a great mockery of the Tree of Life, as his shadows pranced in the form of everything from vicious velociraptors to stampeding elephants to baying hounds.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Pitch sighed wistfully as he gestured to his grotesque creations. "I have you to thank for this masterpiece of mine. My previous nightmares were so… uninspired. Variety is the spice of life, indeed."

"You coward! Come down here and fight me yourself!" she spat at him. She couldn't get close; every time her dragon flapped within attacking range, a cloud of the dark animals would come bearing down on them. It was all the dragon could muster to hack and burn his way through the purple-black sandstorm, and he would be shoved back down in altitude. Nathalie knew better than to think that her bow and arrows would have any appreciable effect, so she had elected to save them for the opportune moment; but she was not weaponless. Upon her arrival to the North Pole, she had been gifted with an ornate short sword by the grand crafter and tinkerer himself. It was perfectly balanced and weighed nothing in her hands, and it cut through the air as smoothly as if it was butter. Any time one of the specters dared come close enough, she would hack through them, making them burst into clouds of harmless sand. However, that sand would just blend back into the maelstrom and reform into another hideous creature. Nathalie was trapped in an endless siege.

That was not to say she was helpless.

With a resounding shriek, the birds that had been circling the sphere of darkness dove in to tear into a large swathe of the nightmares with sharp talons and strident beaks, ripping them asunder. The height of the rainforest canopy had climbed by dozens of feet, and their branches were whipping wildly back and forth at the base of the sphere to rend any of them that were close enough. Jaguars were leaping from the boughs to claw at their prey or crush their heads in powerful jaws, while herds of peccaries and tapirs and deer were stampeding along the ground, chasing any unfortunate stragglers to their doom. Pitch scowled at the relentless assault by the rainforest's denizens.

"Salazar! Go!" she cried as he became momentarily distracted by the hitch in his plans. The dragon surged upwards, and as a large portion of the nightmares surged down from the upper layers of the spheres to meet him, Nathalie jumped up to run over his scaled neck and leap from his head. Her legs pumped wildly as she vaulted through open air, short sword brandished over her head; then, per her design, a thick leafy vine came blasting through the tree line to mark a curving path towards Pitch's perch. She raced up the stalk with sure feet as she spurred its growth. The specters came charging toward her, but she would dramatically alter its course to dodge them, grabbing onto the stalk as it thrashed madly in another direction. Pitch lost sight of her in all the chaos, so he was completely unprepared when she came exploding through the water-like surface of the platform to surprise him from behind.

He only just managed to manifest a scythe to block Nathalie's oncoming attack. The sand had hardened into something reminiscent of obsidian, and as the steel of her sword crashed against its thin handle, sparks danced like fire fairies between them. Suddenly, they alighted the tempest with lightning; with crushing speed they came to blows over and over, weapons clashing together for a millisecond before they sprang apart again. Nathalie was not fool enough to stand on the platform only for the sand to claim her as a victim, so she rode the vine like a twisting slide. Pitch would cleave through its hefty stalk for her to only conjure another, and soon the upper hemisphere of the dark storm resembled the tangled upper story of the forest, choked with thick vines. Water spurted from their hollow cores to rain down around them, thickening the sand and sending it falling in thick chunks down below.

"You're much more athletic that appearance would imply, Mother Nature," Pitch laughed at her, blocking with the blade of his scythe as she somersaulted over his head in an attempt to drive her sword through his gaunt ugly face. He twirled the scythe in his hand just as she was landed to try and cleave her in two, but the vine had already wrested her back to his front side.

"What, did you think I just sat around for four hundred years?" she mocked him. The metallic thunder and lightning sparks boomed between them as their weapons met again, making her fierce emerald eyes gleam with brilliant gold. "I knew someone would come for the Tree of Life eventually. I have trained my body and mind diligently in battle awaiting that day! Your mistake of underestimating me will be your last!"

"How amusing. I was going to say the same thing!" he snarled, pushing her with his scythe. She fell back off the vine, tumbling head over heels through the air. By then, his storm was crumbling under the relentless assault of the natural fauna, allowing an eagle to swoop down and catch Nathalie by her arm. Blood bloomed where its sharp talons dug into the supple flesh of her bicep, but the adrenaline suppressed any pain she would feel. The raptor flung her back up into the fray, allowing her to once more meet Pitch's scythe within seconds of being tossed aside like a ragdoll. "Persistent little-!" he hissed.

" _Nathalie_!"

Her blonde hair, stringy and crimped with sweat, whipped over her shoulder as she tossed a glance to where Jack was calling her from above. As he dove down, he froze an entire section of the dark matter, leaving a wall of glittering purple-black crystals. Nat would almost call them beautiful if they weren't made of Pitch's monstrous parody of the Sandman's golden particles. With a roar, he came bearing down on the Bogeyman like an icy bullet, and an explosion of the dark crystals bloomed like a flower upon impact. Jack skipped away to hover beside her, cheekily smiling despite the absolute hell raging around them.

"I figured you could use a hand. Wait, don't look at me like that, Jamie's fine and Baby Tooth went to get everyone else!" he interrupted as she began to scowl and reprimand him for his foolishness. She huffed and gathered her long blonde hair in a fist, using some twine-like fronds from the vine to tie it in a loose bun over her head. It was getting in her way. The shards of frozen sand shattered to reveal a fuming Pitch Black; his false persona of reasonable demeanor had all but crumbled, leaving his face twisted in fury.

" _I'll destroy you!_ " he howled in derangement, and all but a small circle of the platform detonated like a bomb to come shooting up at them like spires of rock. Nat and Jack sprung apart to weave through the lashing ropes of sand, Jack freezing them solid while Nathalie guided the growing vine around them. They came together again to attack Pitch simultaneously; he was driven down to one knee as he flung his scythe around wildly in a vain effort to fend them off.

"Just give it up, Pitch! You'll never win!" Jack shouted. Pitch just gave an inhuman snarl and lashed out at him, sending Jack rolling through the air a few feet away to keep from being decapitated. The gaunt man tugged at his hair, the slicked-back black strand now in utter disarray around his pale face, and brandished his scythe in a wide arc that pushed the two of them back several yards.

"I _hate_ you!" he screamed and clawed at his cheek. "I will _not_ let all my careful planning come crashing down! _Not again_!"

"Be careful, Jack. A cornered animal is always the most dangerous," Nathalie advised her partner breathily. The fight had only lasted a few minutes, but she was already panting. Every muscle in her body was pulsing at the explosive expense of energy; honestly, she didn't know how long she could keep this up. Calling upon the animals and plants had exhausted her to begin with; all this physical strain was depleting her even more rapidly. Jack was looking just as worse for wear, though he had joined the fight about two minutes after her. Who knew when Baby Tooth would arrive with reinforcements? Her animals were about spent too; many of the birds had dropped from the skies, maimed by the garish nightmares, and the ground animals were now out of reach, forced to prowl below with gnashing jaws. The trees were still growing, but that meant that Nathalie and Jack's fighting arena was rapidly dwindling in size, too, which presented its own set of problems. The two of them could only watch for Pitch's next move.

He released a demonic yowl before the sand suddenly pulsed, then converged on his form. Nathalie was nearly blown off the vine as the air pressure generated from the sudden onrush blasted into her back, but Jack grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her close, burning and freezing be damned. The sand convulsed around the buried Pitch in an indistinct, writhing mass, slowly inching into a more compact form as the pressure increased. Then, slowly, it began to morph into a nightmarish shape around him. A shadow fell over Nathalie and Jack as it grew bigger and more defined; they could only watch slack-jawed as a gigantic tyrannosaurus the height of a skyscraper towered up to loom above them in all its menacing glory. Its maw peeled apart to release a deafening roar that had them both clapping their hands to their ears lest their eardrums burst. Deep within the high-pitched keening bellow, Nathalie could hear the victorious howls of the Bogeyman.

"Is that _fair_?" Jack whined as he whirled his staff in his hand. He set Nathalie back on the vine, ice cracking off her frozen arm to clatter down like shards of a mirror. The massive sand-dinosaur took a lumbering step towards them, crushing several centuries-old trees underfoot and sending the animals Nathalie had gathered fleeing into the depths of the forest. The lingering birds valiantly attempted to attack it by clawing at its head; the sand sprinkled down as they scored harmless scours into the moldable flesh, and Pitch's creation tossed its head about to clamp down on them. Feathers and blood exploded between its dark teeth. In the face of all the careless destruction, Nathalie's insides began to burn, and she sank down onto the sturdy body of the vine with a low, pained moan. "Nat!"

"I can't… He's… He's killing _everything_ ," she hissed. Was it possible for her to lose, even at the height of her power? The dinosaur began lumbering towards them with deliberate, crushing steps, claws ready to rake into her small body. Tremors began to wrack her body. She could hear them screaming, the frightened animals running for their lives and those trapped in the path of the monster, bleeding and mangled and terrified; she could feel the plants' pain as they were ripped and torn and crushed and maimed, releasing hormones into the air to signal their demises. "Uuunhh!" she cried with tears streaming down her cheeks as she curled into a ball onto the stalk. "It hurts, Jack…"

"I know. I know." Though he knew he would add to her pain, he placed a hand on her back. The burning of ice forming underneath his touch was almost soothing compared to the absolute fire surging through every inch of her body. _Get up…_ _ **Get up**_ _, Nathalie! This is no time to falter!_ Clenching her teeth so tightly she thought they might crack, she forced herself back to a standing position, her sword held in a knuckle-white grip. "Nat, you don't have to fight-" Jack began.

"No," she huffed. Her emerald eyes beheld the wild beast eclipsing the horizon, and her grip tightened on the hilt of the short sword. "I must fight. This has always been my fight, from the beginning. If I waver here, I will dishonor all those who came before me." She sucked in a deep breath, fighting back the pain prickling at her every nerve. "As Mother Nature, I will protect the Tree of Life. That is my duty, as I live or die!" she growled and then spurred the vine forward, heading right for the dinosaur's throat.

"That's my girl!" she heard Jack shouting beside her, and despite the dismal situation, she could not help but smirk. Always the optimist, he was. The tyrannosaurus' head bore down as she approached, razor-sharp teeth ready to devour her, and she veered under its chin at the final moment to bury the short sword hilt-deep into its neck. The vine carried her from one invisible vein to the other, and purple sand like blood gushed from its slit throat. The beast wailed in agony and stumbled backwards, barely veiling the hint of Pitch howling in anger within. Jack was skipping over the frosty winds below her, freezing its gigantic legs to the ground. As it swayed back and forth, reeling from Nathalie's blow, she shot backwards and made a twisting motion with her hand. The surrounding trees dug their branches into its thick body, digging and digging into the sandy flesh. She was going to wrench Pitch from inside that monster, one way or another.

There was still _plenty_ of fight left in her.

* * *

Jamie whimpered and curled into a tighter ball underneath Nathalie's dining room table as the cave continued to rumble. From his vantage point, he could see the Pegasus pacing excitedly back and forth through the quivering glass panes of the window. They had been fighting for ten minutes now, at least. The shaking had grown worse and worse over time. Jamie knew he was safe within the confines of the cave, but what about Jack and Nat? He believed in them, sure, but… It was Pitch Black, after all. Last time, it had taken the entire team of Guardians plus Jamie and his friends to defeat him. This time, it was only the two of them.

Sniffling as tears of fear and frustration welled up in his eyes, he crawled out from under the table and to the door. He boosted himself up onto his knees to open the door, because the ground was tremoring far too much for him to hope of walking. He shambled over to the Pegasus to hug its hind leg, crying softly.

"Are you worried too?" he asked as it leaned down to nibble at his messy hair reassuringly. "I can't help but think that there's something that we can do," he sniffed miserably. Wait. Maybe there was! They had taken down Pitch by turning his nightmares back into the golden sand just by touching them. Jamie could just do that again, and it would turn the tide, surely. "Hey! Take me outside! I can help!" he begged the horse. It looked at him hesitantly, driving its hoof into the soft soil of the cave with a disdainful snort as it mulled it over. "Come on. You want to help them too, right?" The horse blinked at him, then snorted again and fell down onto its knees to allow Jamie to clamber onto its back. He clung to its long white hair for purchase as it climbed back up, then took off into a gallop out of the cave. As it leaped through the waterfall, it spread its wings wide, catching the air in a glide. It then began to flap, turning in a wide arc to bear them up the waterfall to the battlefield.

Jamie had never seen something so horrifying.

The forest was razed. Twisted roots of upended trees reached for the sky like skeletons' hands, dirt clinging to them like rotted flesh. The corpses and half-dead bodies alike of various animals were scattered about in pools of blood and feathers and fur. He pressed into the horse as he suddenly grew very nauseous. The rainforest had been so beautiful and now it was just a twisted scene from a horror movie. The ground was continuously and violently rumbling. He cried out and snapped his hands to his ears as a deafening roar resounded through the air, thick with the stench of iron and decay. He looked around wildly for what could be the source of the sound and was greeted with the most nightmarish scene yet.

The grotesque bastardization of a dinosaur was tromping through the forest. Its mass would shift and contort such that sharp spikes burst from its form at random moments, spearing the surrounding trees to send them toppling. He could make out a rapidly twisting vine and Jack's icy wind swirling around it, peppering the sand dinosaur with useless attacks. Jamie gulped and fisted the horse's mane. _Gotta be brave! He's just the Bogeyman! Good thoughts will make the nightmare go away!_ He told himself firmly. "All right! _Charge_!" he shouted and snapped the pegasus' hair like he would reigns. It whinnied and surged forward, galloping in the open air towards the dinosaur.

The wind stung his face at the speed, but he forced his eyes to stay open, one hand held out. All he had to do was touch the dinosaur's body. That's all he had to do. Closer and closer and closer… He could do it! The dinosaur was seemingly oblivious to his approach, too busy with dealing with Nat and Jack. The horse sped towards its big pseudo-scaled belly. He just had to reach… He could already see the golden overtaking the purple, falling away, revealing the defeated Pitch Black within…

Then, spikes shot out towards them. The horse screamed and rocketed upwards at a ninety-degree angle. Jamie screamed in terror as he held on only by the thick fibers of the horse's mane, but his weight was too much for them to bear; they were snapping like frayed ropes in his fingers, and he was slipping, slipping, _falling_. His limbs flailed in the open air as he tumbled head-over-heels, the wind ripping his screams right out of his lungs. He could faintly hear the two teenagers yelling for him, but he couldn't see them in the blurry mess of colors that was his vision. He could only see the blob of darkness as the dinosaur's head reared up to greet him, jaws spread open to devour him whole. No, that wasn't it; spikes were blasting like plumes of fire from its mouth, shooting at him like arrows. He was going to die; he was going to die, and his short life flashed before his eyes. Flickering images, fast like a rolling camera reel; Like background music in his head, for some reason "Ring Around the Rosie" was playing in his head. _Ring around the rosie-_

The first birthday he could remember, the birth of his sister, his first day at kindergarten, losing his first tooth,

 _Pocket full of posies-_

making his first friend on the playground, Christmases, Easter egg hunts, more birthdays, the first time he met Jack, his adventure with the Guardians, playing games in the streets, that first day of spring that set all of this into motion and led him right up to this moment, the moment of his death.

 _Ashes, ashes-_

Then, suddenly, he wasn't falling. He dangled in open air, swaying slowly back and forth. His breath was coming in short, ragged gasps, not nearly good enough to supply oxygen to his still-screaming brain. Fall below him, the writhing trees slowly stopped writhing, quivering leaves and thrashing branches falling still. Wait. He could feels someone's arms wrapped around him, warm and inviting and motherly. Someone was holding him. He felt tears splash down into his brown hair, and he looked up to see Nat, smiling with tears streaming down her face in rivers.

"I've got you. I've got you, Jamie." Her voice was shaking. Her body was too. There was a slithering sound, and he glanced down to see the thick vine curling under his feet. She gently set him down, but his legs were like Jell-O, unable to bear his weight; he sank down to his knees, shaking all over. He had almost died. He had almost died, but Nat saved him. Bursting into tears, he looked back up at her, a thank-you on his lips, but it caught in a lump in his throat as his mouth went dry.

The trees had stopped shaking. The trees had stopped shaking because Nat no longer had the power to move them, because instead of hitting Jamie, one of those spikes had impaled Nat right through her chest.

 _We all fall down._


	15. Chapter 14: Nathalie's Failsafe

It burned. It burned like the day she had died, when the smoke scratched into her lungs with eager little claws, ripping scores into the vulnerable cells and make her choke. Nathalie could feel the tendrils of writhing purple cells painfully probing around her heart and lungs to squeeze them between sharp teeth, bubbling up bright red blood that was staining the pristine fabric of her dress the dark ruby color. It burned, but she felt cold too; a frosty feeling was creeping up from her toes and fingertips, making her sensations fuzzy and indistinct. It burned, yet she smiled down at Jamie even as a dribble of blood rolled down her chin from her mouth which was flooding with the disgusting taste of iron. He looked so scared and miserable, face pale and tears streaming down his cheeks. She was crying too, but not from the pain. She reached out with a violently shaking hand to gently cup his cheek. Warm, full of plenty of life left to live. She had cried thinking of Jamie's young life being cut so short, at his valiant effort to come to save them even knowing the danger, at the absolutely terrified look on Jack's face as the little body plummeted through the air nearing the gaping maw of Pitch's monster.

"I've got you," she repeated hoarsely.

Her body lurched as the spikes retreated. On unsteady feet, she landed on the vine only to fall to her hands and knees. Her nails scraped into the thick, smooth stem as she forced the last of her power into closing the wound in the center of her chest. She could feel the fine grains of sand pumping through her bloodstream, rapidly absorbing her life-giving energy, but this way she could reverse the effects as long as possible. Nathalie still had an ace up her sleeve after all, one that Pitch had failed to discover.

It would only work if she was about to die, however.

"N-Nat…" Jamie whispered. His voice was trembling as much as his body. His wide eyes watched the blood leaking in thick clumps from her body to paint the jade green body of the vine. Though she closed the flow, she spilled at least a cup of it all over the plant. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I just want to save you!" His voice cracked with a high-pitched sob as he buried his eyes into his fists. "It's my fault…"

"Jamie," Nat groaned and went to reach for him, but she hadn't even the strength to lift her arm. It slapped uselessly into the puddle of blood, smearing the hot, sticky stuff over her skin. Her breath came in ragged pants and she scrunched one of her eyes up as she fought to remain conscious. _This is no good… My power is diminishing much faster than I thought it would… I have to get to the Tree!_

" _Nathalie_!" Oh, there was so much heartbreak in her name. Nathalie had only heard Jack's voice sound like that once before, when she was being carted off by the mob of villagers to her doom, and he was left in the street howling in agony. She looked up weakly to see him charging down from the skies, freezing a rolling wave of Pitch's black sand in the process. Just as the vine shuddered and wilted beneath Nat, he swooped down to grab her, holding her shaking form against his body with one arm while tucking the still shell-shocked Jamie under his arm. He sprang away as more of Pitch's spikes sprang forward eager to deliver the winter spirit to his demise. Teeth gritted, he waved his staff in a wide arc and froze them before diving down into the interwoven canopy of the now still rainforest. Gently, he laid Nat in the boughs of on of the sturdy trees, blue eyes raking over her disheveled form in agony. "Nat… You're gonna be okay… Right?" he asked weakly. Jamie whimpered and curled up in his lap to bury his face into his hoodie.

Before she could answer, the sound of tinkling bells rang through the air.

They both looked up to see North's sleigh burst in with a cloud of ice and snowflakes. Pitch's dinosaur had been angrily rooting through the forest in search of his prey, but once the other Guardians charged into the scene, its attention became misdirected. _He has likely lost himself in his rage and the thing is acting purely on bloodlust,_ she reasoned weakly. Pitch would surely know that Nathalie was mortally wounded at this point and there would be no reason to further exhaust himself, but yet he still sheltered within the bestial armor. She heard North holler out in surprise as he wrenched the sleigh away from the monster's swiping claws.

"Jack," Nat whispered. It was hard to speak, but she forced herself to. "Jack, I need to go to the Tree of Life." She hadn't much time. Life was already beginning to drain from the planet. Around her, the tree leaves were flooding with yellow and orange as they crumpled up into brittle, dry masses. The air temperature was dropping by the second. Below, animals were beginning to root into burrows and hide away in their nests as their instincts screamed that a brutal winter was upon them. As foxes fled into dens, the dry ferns were crushed beneath their frantic paws. Mother birds smothered their hatchlings to keep them warm. Her cold-blooded dragon companion had dropped from the sky to lay on his side on the cold ground, breathing deeply as his warm breath formed clouds of water vapor in his mouth while he slipped into hibernation. The fragile leaves began to fall in droves to the ground, leaving the branches naked and thin. This was the epicenter of disaster; if Nathalie did not hurry, the world would soon be prisoner to the thralls of a centuries-long winter. " _Jack_ ," she pressed as he stared at her with wide, scared eyes.

"I got it," he acknowledged softly before grabbing Jamie and jumping up the height of the tree. "North! Down here!" he hollered loudly, hand cupped around his mouth. The sleigh jingled as it dove down to meet him.

"Jack! What on Earth is happening?" The burly man asked angrily. "Why did you leave North Pole?!" Jack ignored him and bundled the softly sobbing boy into his tattooed arms.

"Jack! Are we too late?" Toothiana demanded worriedly. Her iridescent feathers were puffed up with anxiety, and she looked down to where Nathalie was nestled within the dry branches of the tree, pale and ragged. "What's happening to her?" Nathalie looked down at herself; her golden-blonde hair was becoming tainted with black and shearing off at the ends, slowly crawling up, and patches of burned skin were beginning to form on her arms and legs. _I'm reverting back to the state in which I died,_ she thought, wincing at the stinging pain blooming all over her body. She could feel her lungs becoming laden with soot, making her cough weakly.

"Jack, hurry," she moaned and tried to crawl toward him. She slipped and clumsily landed against the wide bough, legs dangling off the thick branch.

"Take care of him! We can still win this!" Jack ordered before hopping down to pluck her from the tree and spirit her down into the dying forest. She just caught a glimpse of North sending the sleigh surging forward as the dinosaur's head reared down to devour it. Jack didn't bother with careful entry; he crashed right through the weakened barrier of vines she had constructed in the hole above the cave. The vines exploded into dust as he blasted them with ice, allowing them to fall right through and spill sunlight back into the spacious room. "Nat, please tell me you have an idea," he begged her as he skipped around the decaying clumps of thick vines and crystals of his own ice to head for the Tree. It was already much worse for wear than she thought; its bark had turned a dark gray color, its large leaves discarded and dry, crunching under Jack's nimble feet. The bubbles of biomes were beginning to turn opaque with darkness, just like her hair, which was still falling and now up to her elbows.

"I can save the Earth," she confirmed. "But…"

"But what?!" he cried and skidded to a halt right before he got to the door of Nathalie's cabin. His ice-blue eyes pierced into her own as he took deep, frantic breaths. "Don't say it. Nat, don't say it."

"I'll die."

Immediately, his expression contorted into one of purest anguish. He looked away and supported her with one arm while he bit down hard on the knuckles of his other hand, drawing blood. She watched the ruby-red river run down his hand before it beaded in a little jewel and splashed down to stain her already stained dress. He sucked in a few breaths through his hand, refusing to look at her. "There's no other way. This is the only failsafe. Either way, I will perish. If I can, I would like to save this world and its future- _Jamie's_ future." He looked at her through the corners of his tear-filled eyes, and she smiled wistfully. "Children can be so cruel. You remember," she laughed wanly. "I've realized now that scary situations make them that way. Children can be so kind, too. Just like you were to me, back then, and just like Jamie is. If Pitch's plan comes to fruition, all the children of the world will lose that kindness. I can't allow it." His hand fell from his mouth to flop loosely down to his side. He looked at her again, blankly; slowly, he smiled at her, a smile full of pride and pain and love.

"You sound like a Guardian, Nat. Let's do it. For Jamie."

* * *

Jack held her like she was made of glass. He could just feel it, the sensation that she could shatter at any moment; her frame was just so thin and light in his arms as he hopped through the branches of the rapidly withering Tree of Life. Her arms were shaking as they wrapped tighter around his neck. On top of the effects of her powers draining from her body, it seems their own little curse was still alive in full-force; he had only been holding her a few minutes, but a thin sprinkle of frost coated her body from head-to-toe, her skin was as pale as the first snow of winter, and her breath was fogging up into clouds as it puffed repeatedly against his neck. The crisp scent of water crystals mingling with the acrid aroma of her singing hair and burning flesh made him nauseous. Where her skin wasn't bright white, it was a burning pink blackened at the edges were it was literally burning away by the second. Her hair had retreated all the way up to her shoulders, where it had been sheared off four hundred years ago. Jack had no idea what she was planning, but he didn't know if she could hang on long enough to even enact her designs. She kept whispering for him to hurry, each one more desperate and pained than the last. She was a whimpering, crying mess by the time he finally delivered her to the dense boughs of the gigantic tree.

"We're here, Nat," he said softly as he laid her down against one of the branches. Moaning in torturous suffering, she rolled onto her side to wrap her slender arms around the massive branch springing from the tree's trunk.

"I need… Your help…" she puffed.

"Anything, Nat. Anything."

"I'm going to… summon… The Earth's spirit," she forced out in irregular pants. Jack's curiosity piqued, but there wasn't enough time to get the details. "My predecessor… Taught me this. The only way… To save the Tree if we are injured. I'm going to… give the tree my life force. That should save it. The Earth… She'll hear me calling…" Her words faltered into a high-pitched squeal as she curled up against the grayed wood, tearing at the bust of her dress to paw at her burning lungs. "Unngh! The Tree… Will be vulnerable… For a short time. Use your magic… To protect it… Jack…"

"Don't worry. I won't let your-" the word bulged in his throat like he had swallowed a frog. He didn't want to say it. It hurt like hell to. "I won't let your sacrifice go to waste," he continued after a moment of steeling himself. Her beautiful emerald eyes, watery and lidded, peered at him through her frayed ends of blonde hair. She smiled shakily in relief and then reached a trembling hand out to him; it fell immediately, but he caught the frail thing in his own.

"I'm so glad… I got to see you again… One last time," she uttered, tears spilling over her lashes to fall down her cheeks. Jack squeezed her hand, refusing to retreat even as his began to burn and hers began to freeze. "You won't forget me… Will you?"

"Never," he promised. "I'll love you for the rest of time. That's a promise." Her eyes closed as she smiled brightly. She intertwined her fingers with his in a bruising, burning hand-hold, but Jack wouldn't let go, no matter how much it hurt. He wrapped an arm around the thick circumference of a nearby branch to brace himself as he pressed against the Tree, whispering something under her breath. Above her head, she splayed out her palm against its rough surface, and a golden light began to slowly glow underneath her skin. It then burst forth, traveling in swirling lines through the indentions in the bark, flooding around them in thousands of golden rivers. The gray bark began to darken back to the rich chocolate color; above his head, the crunchy brown leaves were beginning to balloon with moisture, becoming turgid and green once more. The opacity of the fruit-like orbs was reducing to crystal clarity. All the while, he felt Nat's grip weakening in his own, as the life literally leaked out of her.

"Please. Please help me."

Jack cried out in alarm as the Tree suddenly heaved. He looked around wildly as the branches began writhing, smacking into the stony surface of the cave and collapsing the ancient stone columns as they thrashed. The wood groaned deafeningly as it shifted. There was a loud splintering, tearing sound, and Jack glanced down to see the trunk of the Tree bulging out of the cabin, effectively collapsing it into rubble and planks that were strewn across the ground as the Tree continued to swell like a balloon.

"What's happening?!" he cried to Nat.

"Don't worry," she smiled reassuringly to him. "The Tree… Is just returning… to its natural form."

"You mean it's bigger?!" he shouted as he looked at the snapping branches once more. Indeed, they had grown impossibly larger, bloating to the point that the Tree was becoming cramped in the small cave. They began to twist and curl around one another into disorganized knots. Dust began to rain down from the walls and ceiling as they were pushed to their maximum capacity. "It's all gonna collapse! Nat!"

"Towards the sun," she whispered in a garbled, half-conscious command.

Towards the sun the Tree went. Jack was glad that he had found purchase around one of the branches, because the force of the Tree skyrocketing through the hole in the ceiling surely would have sent him plummeting. His head still snapped forward hard enough for his forehead to smack against the hard wood, leaving him reeling for a moment. As his vision swayed before his eyes, he could barely make out large chunks of earth raining through the writhing branches as they literally tore the edges of the hole apart. Whole trees went flying as the Tree burst into the open air, growing taller and taller and spreading out in a sweeping umbrella over the rainforest. The branches untangled as they were allowed free range, unfurling into twisting lines that seemed to stretch onwards for miles. He peered off the edge of the trunk to see the ground a dizzying height below; he turned his head to see that they were higher even than Pitch's Godzilla-like monstrosity. The Guardians had put up a valiant effort; it was missing one of its small arms and a whole section of its gargantuan head had been blasted away, but it was still roaring and stomping about. As soon as the Tree came into view, it began barreling towards it, jaw wide open to enclose around the trunk.

"Oh, no, you don't!" Jack shouted. He didn't know if the Tree would be able to handle it, but there was simply too much surface area for him to protect otherwise; he slammed his hand down against the bark and ice immediately flooded forth. In a crashing wave, it shot down the Tree's surface to explode in a blooming crystal right as the beast tried to tear out a section of the broad trunk. It released a high-pitched scream as the giant clear crystals tore through the roof of its mouth, and then suddenly, the entire dinosaur began to collapse. Jack stared down at its melting form, thinking _surely_ that it couldn't have been that easy.

Of course it hadn't.

It seemed Pitch was ready for Round Two. The black sand exploded into watery streams, spreading out like tentacles with the gaunt, scowling man standing at its epicenter. Jack left the shuddering Nat to her devices as he stood tall in the boughs of the Tree, staff clutched in his hand as he glared down at him from the dizzying height. Pitch howled in anger and the sand surged forward towards the branches, looking to rip the limbs from the massive tree. Jack wasted no time in slamming both his staff and his hand against the wood on either side of him, sending trails of ice blasting up the branches for them to explode like sharp pointed flowers at every point that Pitch's darkness made contact.

"It's not fair! I _killed_ her!" Pitch screamed up at him and tore at his hair. "I will win! This world will be mine!"

"I won't let you!" Jack screamed down at him. More sand; more explosions of icy flowers; glittering sand and ice chips falling like rain around them. He set his jaw and squared his shoulders as he pushed himself to his very limits, charging the Tree up with ice from the tips of the leaves to the very tops of the leaves. The sunlight glistened on the frosted, frozen shield he had conjured around it; a layer thick enough to shield from harm but thin enough not to cause damage. " _Together, Nat and I will stop you!_ "

Two sides of the same coin, now broken to face one another and join forces. Jack didn't know if he could save Nat, but even if he couldn't, he was going to prove to the whole world that they weren't opposing forces. United, spring and winter, cold and warmth, Jack and Nathalie- they would join hands to become an unstoppable force of nature.

To defeat Pitch.

To protect the world.

To live up to the name of _Guardian_.


	16. Chapter 15: Don't Give Up

The wind gently ruffled Jamie's hair as he peeked over the edge of North's sleek sleigh, down at the sprawling green mass that was the top of the Tree of Life. When the plant had burst from the ground in rumbling splendor, the Guardians had rose up into the sky to watch it bloom like a green rose; its branches spread out in a grand sphere as wide as two football fields, stretching from the wrecked forest floor hundreds of feet below the bough up to hundreds of feet into the sky. Jamie could see the sunlight reflecting on the little beady fruits that contained the record of nature; they had seemed so huge in the Tree's reduced form, but now, they were buried deep within the massive green leaves like little white-gold berries, hundreds of them sparkling like hidden treasures within the depths. He jumped as the dark dinosaur collided with the beefy trunk, except at the point of impact, Jack's clear ice burst forth in a thick, shearing wall. His eyes began to water miserably. Jack and Nat were still fighting.

"It's all my fault," he sobbed again. He hung his head in shame as the Guardians looked at him. "If I hadn't tried to help… Nat would still be…"

"Oh, Jamie, sweetie," the Tooth Fairy cooed and hugged her head to her feathered chest. "You didn't meant to. I'm sure Mother Nature doesn't blame you for anything." Jamie sniffed and buried his face into her. His tears caught on the fibers of her feathers to glimmer like little diamonds among the colorful display.

"She's right," the Easter Bunny drawled in his Australian accent. "Don't get down! Nat is still alive 'n kickin', ain't she? Instead of cryin', you should be rootin' for 'em down there." Jamie turned to look at them tearfully. They were all smiling. Could they really not blame that at all for the fact that Nat was going to die? The Sandman hobbled over to give him a pat on the head while North procured a little wooden bird to try and make him feel better. Jamie took it and hugged it to his chest, then nodded firmly. _I have to believe in her and Jack… And all the rest of them, too. I can still help by supporting them!_

"You're right. They're not fighting alone!"

* * *

Jack was panting heavily. Pitch was eye-level with him now, standing on his swirling purple-black platform of sand several yards away. The Bogeyman was flailing his arms to fling screwing spiraling spears of the hardened sand at the Tree, and growing more frustrated by the second as Jack continuously deflected the blows with his blooming ice. The Tree was decorated with the crystalline structures now, making it seem like it was in the height of spring; sunlight danced in kaleidoscopic arrays across their pointed surfaces, showering Jack and Nat in dappled white light. The golden light was still pulsing in rivers through the bark. It was much brighter now, nearly overtaking the slim lines of wood between the grooves.

"I'll kill you _both_!" Pitch howled in deranged mania and sent a large spear of sand right for him. Jack grunted and pushed into the tree again; a thick shield of ice shot up in front of them, shaking violently as the sand continuously pummeled against it like a pressure washer.

"Nat… I don't know how long I can keep this up," he groaned and looked over his shoulder at her. His white hair was slicked to his forehead as perspiration rolled down him in beading bullets. She was no worse for wear; she was incredibly pale now, slumped entirely against the tree with her hand flopped down against the top of her head, only the tips of her fingers still in contact with the Tree.

"Please help us," she was begging repeatedly in quiet whispers. "Please… I need you… The world needs you… _Wake up!_ " Jack clenched his teeth at her pitiful begging. He whipped around, dropping the ice shield as he did, and looked up at the clear blue sky. He knew he was watching. Even if he wasn't showing, he could always see- the Man in the Moon.

"Can't you do something?!" he howled up into the endless expanse. "Are you just going to watch while we're doing everything we can?!"

"Praying to the Man in the Moon now? Are you all out of _options_?" Pitch cackled, and Jack was only just able to form another ice shield before the sand exploded before him. He winced as he heard the ice cracking under the relentless assault. Through the viscous glass-like surface, he saw Pitch whip out his scythe to strike at North as the sleigh dove down to greet him.

"Come on," he whined, body slumping as all his muscles screamed in protest. Had Pitch really been this strong last time they fought? Had all the anger and revenge made him this much tougher? They were going to lose. He could feel it. If someone didn't step in- He heard Nat cry out in a shrill whine and turned around to see her fall face-first into the bough of the Tree. "No, no. Nat. Stay with me," he babbled as he scrambled towards her, hoping the others could keep Pitch busy enough. He slid on his knees to pull her against him. Her head flopped lifelessly onto his shoulder; her emerald eyes had darkened with exhaustion and were glossed over. The only way he could tell that she was alive was through the weak rise and fall of her chest. "Nat, come on, don't give up."

"She can't… hear me…" Screaming in frustration, Jack punched the Tree, only to rip the skin from his knuckles. He was numb to the burning pain because of the absolute shredding of his heart.

"Come on," he pleaded again, voice breaking and tears falling from his eyes. He hugged Nathalie to his chest and gently rocked her back and forth. He grabbed her hand and pressed it down hard into the wood of the Tree, praying she could keep up that connection. "Come on, come on, _come on_ … She's your champion, isn't she?! How can you just stand aside and watch as she gives her life for nothing?! Are you really going to just let all her efforts go to waste like this?" he demanded angrily. He didn't even know if he was being heard, but it was all just too much; they had come too far, sacrificed too much, for it all to fall apart now.

"Jack…" Her smiling face was blurred with the angry tears brimming in his eyes. "Thank you…"

"No, don't start that," he begged her and began pressing desperate, open-mouthed kisses to her face and forehead. "Just a little longer… Hang on… We'll save the Tree, I promise…" His lips found hers, and they were so cold against his, stiff and unmoving. He whispered her name against her mouth, as if he could breathe a little more life into her even as her ragged breath fogged between their faces from the chill he was spreading through her body. Jack didn't look up as his ice shield cracked and shattered and the black sand came rushing over them; he curled around her body, the sharp sand and shards of his own ice shredding into his clothes and hair and skin. "Nat… Please… Don't go…" he pleaded.

As the whirling mass of sand enclosed around him, Jack prepared for the end.

And then, suddenly, it was… Warm.

 _I heard you, young one._

Jack cracked his eye open to see that a bubble of golden light had formed around them. He mistook it for a second for Sandy's golden threads of sand, but that wasn't it; a thin film of barrier spread between the slowly-moving threads of light, not unlike the bubbles that enclosed the various biome fruits of the Tree of Life. The sand was pounding against it uselessly. Suddenly, the bubble began to expand, forcibly pushing away Pitch's black sand. It jumped back to its master, who was standing amongst thrashing tendrils of the stuff with an expression of anger and horror. The Tree was unharmed, as just a few centimeters above its surface pulsed the barrier; it had enclosed the entire structure in its defensive hold, preventing Pitch from making so much as a scratch.

"Is this her doing?!" Pitch howled. Jack looked down at Nat, who was still in his arms.

"No… This is different…" he murmured as he compulsively swept a few of her tangled strands from her white, cold face. She was alive, but barely. Her green irises just barely showed through her thick lashes as she stared up at the shell of light shielding them. Her pink lips slowly curled into a weary smile.

"She came…"

 _Yes. I am sorry for the delay. I have mustered all of my power to face this great evil. You have done very well, young Nathalie._ Jack instinctively hugged Nat to him as a form began to take shape within the bubble before them. The clear fluid-like matter inlaid with gold streams bubbled up to form the shape of a woman, hair streaming in waves down to her feet. The strands continuously moved like she was underwater. Her eyes and mouth were made of pure sunlight, and though they were indistinct in the constantly-shifting landscape of her face, Jack couldn't deny that it looked incredibly kind. The woman-like form walked over to kneel down beside Nat and gently stroke her short hair. _Mother Nature, my young champion…_ The woman's mouth didn't move in any semblance of speaking, but Jack could hear her voice clearly. _And you, Jack Frost._ He jumped slightly when she looked at him. Her voice carried quite the amount of wonder. _So curious. You are the antithesis of Mother Nature. I thought surely that if you two were ever to come into contact, there would be dire consequences, and yet…_ She looked into the expanse of the branches, where Jack's ice still glittered like massive flowers among the leaves. _You two worked together to protect the Tree._

"Of course I did," he huffed haughtily, puffing out his cheeks indignantly.

 _The Man in the Moon chose quite a spirited one,_ she laughed teasingly. Her laugh sounded like the ringing of clear bells on a spring morning. She looked out to the sky and Jack did too; the full moon was blazing among the clouds though it was the height of the day. It seemed Jack's yelling hadn't been for nothing. _Pitch Black has grown far stronger than we ever imagined. We shall purge this plague from the planet once and for all._ Jack didn't feel the least bit sorry for Pitch at the amount of venom dripping from her voice. Earth stood and strolled out from the boughs of the Tree, walking on thin air with her hand streaming behind her like golden fire. Pitch cowered in his nest of darkness, taking a few hesitant steps back.

"How is this possible? I know I killed her. How did she have the strength to summon you?" he hissed.

 _Because,_ she responded matter-of-factly, _unlike you, my vassals have strength of heart. They are far stronger than you can ever wish to be._

"I'll destroy you! This world can still be mine!" Pitch yowled and sent the sand barreling towards her. The woman stopped and held up her arms on either side of her, like she were welcoming it. A ripple of energy pulsed up the Tree, making Jack gasp and look up. He spotted one of the glistening bubbles within the leaves and was shocked to see it was now glowing with golden light; then, little golden spirits began to bleed out, wispy golden forms of elk and wolves and foxes and hawks flying out of the sphere to bound into the air. Above their heads, the golden animals gathered in a cacophonous mass not unlike the storm Pitch had conjured at the beginning of their fight.

"Two can play at that game!" Pitch growled, and his sand whirled around him to re-form the ugly, distorted visions of wildlife. He sent them surging upwards, and the purple and gold forms clashed splendidly like fireworks in the sky. It was very evident from the outset that Pitch was overpowered. "Impossible!" he howled in agony as his animals exploded into useless dust one after the other.

 _These mockeries could never hope to surpass my creations,_ Earth laughed. Pitch paced frantically atop his floating platform, tearing at his greasy hair.

"No… No… Not again… My plan was flawless! _Flawless_! How can this be?" he wailed.

 _You made the mistake of underestimating my chosen Guardian. Return to the crypt from whence you came and reflect._ As the last of Pitch's animals was obliterated, the stampede of golden animals bounded towards him to surround him in a whirling maelstrom of golden light. He turned in a circle as they swirled around him, overwhelming him with their golden brilliant. With a final animalistic howl as they converged on him, he wrapped the sand around himself to flee down to earth, vanishing within the shadows. The animals chased after him, flooding in a golden river through the ruined forest, before they dissolved into a sparkling shower of glimmering gold dust. _If there is anything that wretch excels at, it is running away,_ she scoffed.

"Amazing…" Jack breathed in awe. She had taken him down almost as if it were nothing. He doubted that she was even using a fraction of her power. It almost invalidated the valiant effort he and Nat had put up earlier.

 _Do not disparage yourselves. Pitch Black had been significantly weakened by your and Nathalie's efforts. If I had been facing him at his prime, that would have been a longer battle,_ the woman remarked, like she had read his mind. She was still standing out in the open air but facing him now. Jack bundled up the barely-breathing girl in his arms and jumped out of the Tree, skipping on his wintery wind to her.

"Please. Can you save her?" he asked hopefully, desperately. Her head tilted as she surveyed Nat. She was completely limp in Jack's arms, head fallen back and emerald eyes closed and hands resting limply over her stomach. She was barely clinging to life, and the ice that had encrusted her body wasn't helping. Jack himself was flushed and panting with heat. He felt like he was melting from the inside out. His vision hazed at the edges as he unsteadily stumbled in the air. "Please… I love her… I don't think I can live without her," he begged weakly. Her golden eyes flickered up to meet his momentarily, then she tossed a glance over shoulder at the shining moon where the Man in the Moon observed silently.

 _I can save her, and we will undo your curses, as well,_ she agreed when she turned back to him. Jack almost dropped out of the sky fainting with relief and happiness. _However, you must assure me that you will not forget yourselves. The balance of the world is dependent upon the two of you._ Jack nodded emphatically in acknowledgement. Earth smiled charmingly at him before she waved a hand, and Nathalie began to glow with the soft golden light. Jack gasped lightly as it surrounded her form, and then she began to float up out of his arms. Her white dress rippled with the slight air current as she rose to hover between them, golden light growing brighter with every passing moment. Behind Earth, the moon also began to glow, spilling silvery moonbeams down on the unconscious girl. Jack watched in wide-eyed wonder as the two lights streamed around her in an oval shell, like interlocking water currents swirling in river rapids. _She is fading…_

"What?!"

 _Our powers will not be effective if Nathalie herself does not possess the will to live. She had been incredibly weakened. I fear she cannot hold on._

"No! She has to! Nathalie!" he cried and lunged forward to grab her. He instantly recoiled with burning pain as his hands plunged into the ball of light and took hold of her; he yanked his palms back to find them an angry pink.

 _You two have been in contact with one another for too long. The curse is strengthening to try and counteract your opposing natures._

"I don't care," Jack growled and coated his hands over in ice. "I'm not letting her go. If my ice melts, I'll just make more. I can do it!" he insisted. Without waiting for her permission, he leaned over Nathalie to envelop her in an embrace, turning her and pulling her entire body flush against him. The ice he had built down his front instantly began to hiss and melt with heat, and he concentrated all his energy in keeping a consistent barrier. There was nothing to protect Nathalie, however, and she began to shiver violently as frost spread across her skin. "Come on, Nat," he whispered as he pressed a long kiss into her dirty golden hair. "Please come back to me." The silver-and-gold film enveloping her body began to grow and pulse with energy.

 _She hears you._

That was all the encouragement he needed.

"Nathalie. Nathalie, I told you I would find a way, right? Please don't give up now. We're so close. Please, just open your eyes, say something," he begged her. Tears were brimming up in his eyes again. His heart leaped in his chest as he saw her frosted eyelashes flutter. "That's it. Come on, Nat. You're so strong. Come back now." At this point, North had pulled up the sleigh alongside them, and Jamie was sitting up on his knees leaning over the edge watching with bated breath. His ice was melting faster than he could make it. He hissed at the burning heat flooding over his stomach and chest, but he be damned if he let her go now. The pulsing light was burning into his irises at the sheer intensity; the film had spread over him as well, now, casting him in its ethereal glow. The barrier flowed like water over the two of them. He felt it bubbling over his skin, cool to the touch and a welcome respite to his burning skin. Nathalie's teeth chattered as she was wracked with tremors in his arms. Her ragged breath puffed in white clouds in front of his face as her head still continued to hang limply back at a dramatic angle. Was it not working?

His ears began to ring with a low but shrill whine. The light was streaming around him at blinding speed now; he couldn't see anyone, anything, nothing but the girl he loved in his arms. Every part of him felt like it was on fire and he was sure that Nat felt the same, but he couldn't let go. Her eyes were rapidly moving under her eyelids as her lashes continued to flutter, and she breathed out his name. Jack wasn't sure if it was the reflection of the light beams in his eyes, but he could swear that the streams had invaded their bodies, coursing through their veins in pure energy. His body was humming like a quiet engine, rapidly gaining pitch. "Nathalie," he whispered as he leaned in to lightly run the tip of his nose up the side of hers. "Don't give up on me, Nat." He had told her that as they sat together in Toothiana's palace, having no idea of the trial that was looming ahead of them. He meant it just as much then as he meant now. Face scrunching up miserably, he pressed his cheek into hers, nose buried in her beautiful hair. " _Don't give up_."

"Jack." He felt her hands wrap tightly around the upper muscle of his arms, and in response, he hugged her tighter. The light was screaming now, blinding; he couldn't open his eyes no matter how much he wanted to. Jack could feel it singing shrilly in his veins, and slowly, very slowly, the burning in his body waned, just as the light crashed around them in tremendous symphony…

* * *

When Nathalie opened her eyes, the azure sky was stretching above her. With every deep breath she took, her chest brushed against Jack's with how tightly she was pressed up to his body. _Jack,_ she realized suddenly, lifting her head groggily. His icy blue eyes were there to greet her, sparkling with tears and overwhelming joy. "How?" she murmured as he swept a hand into her golden locks, which had somehow grown back to its long, waving length around her knees. The burn marks weren't littering her skin anymore either and she could breathe freely now.

Most importantly, he was holding her, and Nathalie felt no pain at all.

"I told you. I would find a way," he smiled cheekily. Gently, his fingertips swept over her soft cheek in ghosting touches.

"I heard you calling for me…" she sighed as she relaxed against him. Her feet were dangling in the open air, but secure in Jack's arms, she had no fear of falling. She suddenly became aware of eyes on her, and she looked over her shoulder to see the glimmering form of Earth standing calmly behind her. "You…"

 _You and Jack are free to be with one another as you please. The Tree of Life is safe, and life has returned to the world,_ she reported with a sweeping arm. Nathalie glanced down to see that the rainforest had burst into life anew; all the ripped and shredded trees had been replaced with new towering growths. She could feel the energies of the animals below, content and at ease now that Pitch's darkness was vanquished. _Pitch Black was not utterly destroyed; he is surely hiding away, biding his time for another scheme._

"Undoubtedly," Nat sighed before looking at Jack with a smile, "but it will be a long time before he dares show his face again."

"Naaaaaaaat!" She turned to see Jamie hanging halfway out of the sleigh, legs kicking wildly as he groped in open air for her. Jack hurriedly jumped forward with her to catch him as he tipped over, and Nat grabbed him to hold him gently in a motherly hug. "I'm so glad you're okay!" he sobbed as he pressed his face into her. "I'm sorry…"

"It's all right, Jamie. You're safe. That's all that matters."

"Great. Now that everythin' is all hunky-dory, I guess we can deal with the facts that you two fools snuck outta the North Pole, eh?" the Easter Bunny scolded with a deep scowl. Jack flinched and rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.

"Yeah… About that…"

As the adults started chastising them fiercely, Nathalie looked back to the glowing form of the Earth smiling behind her. With a gentle wave, she began dissolving into gold dust, returning her life force to the Earth below.

 _I hope your second life is a long and happy one, my child._

Nathalie smiled as she laid her head down onto Jack's shoulder. She had no doubt it would be.


	17. Chapter 16: One Day, Revisited

A yawn split Jamie's face as he groggily sat up in the bed, rubbing at his encrusted eyes as he blearily blinked away the lingering sleep. He smacked his lips a few times as he watched the sunbeams play across the surface of the plush comforter that was currently staving of the winter chill of the cabin. For Christmas vacation, his parents had decided to travel south to spend the holiday in the Appalachians and rent a cabin. It was an impressive structure with a great many amenities, but due to its construction, sometimes the winter cold would seep in during the early hours of the morning before they got the fireplace going. Jamie threw the covers off himself and jumped down to shove his feet into his slippers, scratching at his stomach as he approached the window. It was fogged up with icy chill, which he rubbed away with the sleeve of his pajamas. Through the ice-encrusted pane, he could see a thin layer of snow covering the yard, accented by the dark green of the pine trees stretched the circumference around the secluded cabin. Distantly, he wondered if Jack was around.

" _Jamie_!" he heard his parents calling for him for breakfast. The little boy tottered out of his bedroom to the kitchen, where he was greeted with the buttery aroma of pancakes. Still sleepy, he clumsily slid himself into his chair and took a big gulp of his milk, the robust flavor waking him up a little. As he was drowning his pancakes in syrup, he noticed his mother stop by the window with a surprised gasp.

"It's the dead of winter, but look at the way the flowers on the bush are blooming," she remarked, waving the family over. Jamie boosted himself up on the windowsill; sure enough, the dark jade leaves were contrasted by bright pink flowers stubbornly blooming despite the chill. A knowing smile split Jamie's face and he jumped down from the window to run to the front door, throwing it open with no regard for how eagerly the cold wind would jump inside. "Jamie!" His mother scolded but he ignored her, running out in the porch to find her dancing.

No matter how many times he heard it, the Earthsong was always as beautiful as the first time. Mother Nature's voice rose and fell in melodious waves as she traveled across the snow-covered yard, arms waving and her dress flowing around her like water. Where her feet touched, the snow melted away to be soaked up by new shoots of green grass springing up. Her blonde hair caught the sunlight to alight like golden fire behind her. Jamie was vaguely aware of his family joining him on the porch, though the only other who could see the gorgeous woman's performance was his little sister. Spellbound and enthralled, she tugged wordlessly on Jamie's sleeve and pointed; in response, he just nodded, not wishing to speak as it would ruin Nathalie's spellbinding dance.

"It's warm," clucked his father in surprise. "I guess it's just a freak warm spell."

"No, that's not it," Jamie smiled. "When winter and spring meet, it's because Jack Frost and Mother Nature are dancing together." Nathalie turned and smiled as Jack came down from the sky to sweep her up by her hips, spinning her around and around with joyful laughter. Nathalie giggled as she held on to his shoulders until he finally set her down after a few rotations.

"Jack Frost and Mother Nature?"

"Uh-huh. They're in love, even though they control two different seasons. Most of the year they have to spend apart, but sometimes they come together, and it's winter and spring at the same time."

"Is that so?" his mother mused in amusement, watching as winter and spring fought for dominance in the yard but unable to see the two teenagers now waltzing with one another as they stared lovingly into each other's eyes. "That's a beautiful love story."

"Mhmm," Jamie agreed. "I gotta finish my pancakes real fast so I can go play with them!" he cried and ran back into the kitchen.

"With who?"

"Jack Frost and Mother Nature, duh!"

* * *

"Don't eat too fast or you'll choke!" Jack hollered as Jamie dashed back into the cabin. Nathalie giggled at his concern, lazily winding her arms around his neck. "What? You know he will," he snorted as he looked back at her. He reached up to draw one of her hands out with his, playing with her fingers a moment before bringing them to his lips to kiss each of her fingertips.

"You'd better get that all out of your system. Jamie will think it's gross," she laughed lightly. Jack snorted again and continued to plant tiny little kisses over her skin, kissing her palm before dotting them up her knuckles, up her arm and over her shoulder, rising over her neck before he finally claimed her awaiting lips in a fervid, sweet smooch. Nathalie couldn't help but chuckle at how eagerly he was lavishing attention on her. He always got like this when they met; he was a very clingy lover, she had found. "It's only been two months."

"Too long," he whined against her mouth.

"Relax," she crooned, her emerald eyes opening to behold his icy-blue ones. "After all… we have an eternity."

"That we do," he purred and kissed her again, "but might as well make the most of it, yeah?" Nathalie smiled into the kiss, threading her fingers through his tufty white hair.

And they did make the most of it, every day for all of eternity.


End file.
